Apple did for iPads:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S5BLs51yDQ

https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/16/ipad-pro-whats-a-computer-ad/

I have a different take on the ad. The ad is saying that computer is the obsolete experience, not that the iPad can do everything a computer can do. If Apple truely believed that, they would not have a mac line up.

For a certain demographic of people, I would agree. I continue to push the iPad for my aging parents because it can do what they need to do without my tech support. They don't need all the flexibility of a computer as a general purpose computing device. They just need to browse the web, write emails and watch videos, and the iPad is perfect for them.

Obligatory: https://youtu.be/jCb-WcxO5SU?t=52

That ad says literally the opposite of what you claim: the iPad is NOT a computer.

Correct, because it fulfills the ability to generally compute despite not being a computer. It is an evolutionary replacement.

You are reading text that is not present in the ad.

I am reading the subtext. Pray I don’t read it further.

Are you threatening me with more evidence that your close text readings are bogus?

Please, I do not threaten; I promise.

Huh? I don’t see any further close readings. Empty promises.

Looks like you need to learn how to read text that is not present in my post.

Here is the proof that the iPad is a computer: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

Any questions, or do you still want to whinge over how "turing completeness isn't computation!"? You're welcome to it, but quite obviously the Digital Markets Act has nothing to do with it. Apple would be a designated gatekeeper if they sold Cuisinart blenders, now they have to cope or leave the relevant markets.

It's truly shocking to me how some people are willing to write multiple pages of comments in response to this. Half the people in this thread are replying to every positive comment they can find crying "Atlas Shrugged!" like bloody murder.

There are microprocessors with storage in any object you can buy, so obviously your evidence that iPad is a computer is pretty casual.

I don’t think the DMA will change much but do find it funny how many people think they are defending human freedom by getting a convoluted process to run emulators, uBlock, and piracy apps on their phone.

> how many people think they are defending human freedom

So... what's a better way to defend human freedom? Letting market conditions deteriorate further?

European regulators are idiots who have spent nearly half a decade trying to undermine end to end encryption. If I were them, I’d say their best chance at defending human freedom would be to make nuclear reactors easy to build, not engaging in some boondoggle about how easy it is to install some apps on a phone. This will end up being as useful as GDPR privacy notices and cookie consents on websites.

> European regulators are idiots who have spent nearly half a decade trying to undermine end to end encryption.

How exactly are they different from Apple, then? Why didn't Apple resist their incorporation into FIVE-EYES and Europe's surveillance network?

> If I were them, I’d say their best chance at defending human freedom would be to make nuclear reactors easy to build

That's the Free Market's job. If the world's largest company was a nuclear reactor business and not a smartphone one, maybe they'd be doing it.

> This will end up being as useful as GDPR privacy notices and cookie consents on websites.

Or as effective as their USB-C regulation. Time will tell, eh?

> How exactly are they different from Apple, then

Because Apple sells the highest security mass market consumer device ever made? Because Apple brought easy to use, end to end encryption to the masses with iMessage?

No clue what your point here is besides regurgitating some non-specific conspiracy theory about the extent of Apple’s cooperation with the government.

> That's the Free Market's job.

Regulation is not the free market’s job, as you evidently believe since you are so excited about digital markets regulation.

Maybe they could start by not categorizing wood pellets shipped across the Atlantic and produced from strip mining forests in southeastern United States as “green energy.”

> Or as effective as their USB-C regulation

How was USB-C regulation effective? Yeah Apple complied, but are customers’ lives better? In aggregate? By what metric? I for one had to buy a new iPhone cable for the first time in half a decade to connect my phone to my car. By its stated aims, the regulation was not effective in my case.

The mere fact that you had to buy a cable does not speak to the efficacy or lack thereof of the regulation, any more than the first tweet I found by searching "USB-C Apple" does.

https://twitter.com/trunarla/status/1706760798662758517

I suppose hackers really are digging EU regulation in this area!

https://twitter.com/trunarla/status/1706766113672212932

Gamers too?

https://twitter.com/VadimYuryev/status/1704507228353351741

I was not the one claiming the regulation was effective, so the burden of proof isn't on me.

Ah, but you are claiming that the regulation was ineffective, by advancing your anecdotal case as evidence. And with one simple search there is at least two anecdata points that cancel out yours.

You made no claim. A single contradiction is not a refutation or even a counterarguement. It is the bare-minimum disagreement you can assert without attacking the speaker instead of the problem: https://issuepedia.org/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_of_Disagreeme...

This argument may not be worth continuing if you don't have anything left to say.

You: The regulation to require USB-C was effective. [no citation]

Me: By what standard? In my specific case, it wasn’t.

You: Blah blah blah burden of proof hierarchy of disagreement.

So do you have any citation or do you plan to keep deflecting? So far, my anecdote has been the only evidence provided about the matter, even if it’s weak which I already conceded.

> So do you have any citation or do you plan to keep deflecting?

Deflecting what? Nobody here cares about your metric of success, which so far seems to be substantiated on the same marginal frustration that people felt with the 30-pin to Lightning switch. Nothing you have presented suggests a populist rejection of USB-C. If anything, it's actually much more popular than Apple's standard.

> How was USB-C regulation effective? Yeah Apple complied, but are customers’ lives better? In aggregate? By what metric?

...did you miss all those links of people plugging their iPhones into displays and class-compliant devices? People programming and gaming and working with standard audio equipment using a single cable, like they should have been able to do from the start?

Customers lives are great right now. People who own non-Apple products like the Nintendo Switch or cough cough a Macbook can now charge their iPhone using the same cable. Households that avoid Apple products waste less money and material owning and buying cables for one device. Lack of MFi certification means that the cheap cables don't have to be built like shit. Hell, the simple fact that you can break the connector to remove it from your phone instead of taking it to the Genius Bar so you can get the whole IC board replaced.

I'm sure it's frustrating for Apple, losing out on the licensing fees and killing their dream of owning a serial standard. Sucks to suck.

> Because Apple sells the highest security

Citation: Apple

> Regulation is not the free market’s job, as you evidently believe

Innovation is. The European Union was not founded to build a better Nuclear Reactor (nor would it tangibly impact their citizen's freedom). Regulating the market those citizens participate in does. I'm not so sure why you're complaining about this so much. If Apple's self-righteous crusade to own all digital IP was truly worth it, they could abandon Europe and continue on. But it's not- for one because they value money, and for two because they already work with FIVE-EYES and every domestic European nation to surveil on their users. No conspiracy, Apple documents it themselves: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/

> I for one had to buy a new iPhone cable for the first time in half a decade to connect my phone to my car. By its stated aims, the regulation was not effective in my case.

Cope.

You do realize, if anything, the DMA itself is cope. The EU's consumer electronics industry has been lapped by the rest of the world, and now all they can do is nitpick connectors and firmly demand that Apple support something almost no users care about.

How do you explain Japan also mandating this? As I recall, South Korea, India, Australia, and several other nations have also been calling for Apple to open up iOS as well.

> the DMA itself is cope

It's a democratically passed bill to protect a market from extensive damage. Here are the people who voted for it: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/242706/IMCO%20Voting%...

Again, if Apple shared your opinion then maybe they'd call Europe's bluff. Again, Apple is chronically incapable of doing this because it would mean being eaten alive by shareholders that make $DIS owners look rational. Leaving the European market would be the trigger-pull of Apple's suicide.

> and now all they can do is nitpick connectors

...you're still mad about a $4 gas station cable? Seriously?

> and firmly demand that Apple support something almost no users care about.

"Why is the United States wasting their time with these Rockefeller people? They're coping over things the unbridled success of Standard Oil, pushing legislation that none of their customers care about!" - imagine the free market with a bunch of yous at the helm.

> Again, if Apple shared your opinion then maybe they'd call Europe's bluff.

One can believe regulation is counterproductive while complying with it. Compliance isn’t evidence of success.

> you're still mad about a $4 gas station cable? Seriously?

USB-C is the last connector I’d cheap out on for my personal electronics, given its tendency to fry devices. In any case, the rationale for standardizing the connectors was that buying cables was an environmental and anti-consumer catastrophe, which is hilarious for a continent that imports wood pellets from across an ocean to heat homes. Suddenly me having to buy one is no biggie?

(I’m not mad, I’m perplexed.)

> imagine the free market with a bunch of yous at the helm

It’d be much better. I actually care about asking if regulation is productive and effective. You seem to be focused on whether it’s a sick own and think people who question efficacy are “coping”.

For example, I commented elsewhere in this thread that Apple’s requirement to only rent Macs for 24 hours at a time in VPS services is silly and shouldn’t be enforceable.

> Compliance isn’t evidence of success.

If I could facepalm any harder, my hand would pass through my skull and hit the wall behind me. Your definition of success is relative, and judging from every piece of evidence you have presented so far, it's also quite petty. Not the same definition of success the EU is using. So... you're welcome to disagree, but nobody is using your metric of success.

> Suddenly me having to buy one is no biggie?

Quite literally, yes.

> It’d be much better.

I'm going to tear my hair out. This is the reason nobody takes you serious in argumentation.

> I commented elsewhere in this thread that Apple’s requirement to only rent Macs for 24 hours at a time in VPS services is silly and shouldn’t be enforceable.

Congratu-fucking-lations. Next you're going to have some prophetic vision that their relationship with China is somehow harmful, or that the Butterfly Keyboard hurt your fingers. Maybe you are the expert market correspondent you claimed to be.

> You seem to be focused on whether it’s a sick own

You know what? I am. Apple spent the last 10 years playing their own game of sick ownership, now it's only fair that they should be forced to choose between first-world market access and fair play. If you want to question the efficacy of user freedom, use actual examples and arguements. Here's the chart again if you need help: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qgQR5VUoGDU/UzV5nP4xKnI/AAAAAAAADo...

> which is hilarious for a continent that imports wood pellets from across an ocean to heat homes.

As annoying as it is to call it out, that’s a classic whataboutism right there.

What about Japanese regulators

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36393809

Tell it to the right to repair farmer-hackers. Same category of concerns.

Apple did, with their marketing.

The EU did, by qualifying Apple as a services gatekeeper on iPhone:

  1.   An undertaking shall be designated as a gatekeeper if:

  (a)  it has a significant impact on the internal market;

  (b)  it provides a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users; and

  (c)  it enjoys an entrenched and durable position, in its operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

None of those indicates whether a device is a general-purpose computer.

Everything that I purchase that contains a CPU should be within my power to run arbitrary code upon.

Seriously, what site are we even on right now?

The very same site where a significant number of users argue, completely seriously, that game consoles are not general purpose computing devices and, as such, should not be subject to the same rules.

I'd define the "general purposeness" by the public availability of an official SDK. Video game consoles are strange because there's no agreement whether they are appliances or not. Most of them also have unofficial public SDKs. Heck, some people would even say that routers are general purpose computing devices and install a custom OS on theirs.

Apple's SDKs are "public" in the sense that you can go read them, but if you want to ship anything with them on iOS, you need a paid developer account, right? I wouldn't call that public.

Given the context, I’m guessing what you want is to run arbitrary code on an OS that manages the battery, the network, the display, audio in and out, provide a security apparatus... You want all of the benefits of the well-managed, walled garden.

Or did you mean just running ARM Assembly?

> I’m guessing what you want is to run arbitrary code on an OS that manages the battery, the network, the display, audio in and out, provide a security apparatus... You want all of the benefits of the well-managed, walled garden.

...or a sufficently advanced browser :p (and people wonder why MacOS is loaded with lazy Electron ports...)

Distributing software should be free, ignoring the cost of transmitting the information and storing it on the client. Apple's pricing is arbitrary, and their defense of it is unsubstantiated. Forcing the App Store to compete is the only natural step forward for Apple, whether they (or their shareholders) want to admit it or not.

If you're going to make an appeal to identity: what kind of lame hackers need to appeal to a bunch of stuffy suits in Brussels to get homebrew running on a general purpose computer?

A good hacker does not reject any tool at their disposal. The corpos certainly don’t.

So if a company bribes a politician for favorable regulation, you view that as simply "good hacking"?

Social engineering is a form of hacking, and there are grey, white, and black hat forms of hacking. Hacks also vary in terms of skill, and elegance. What you describe sounds very script kiddie.

A good hacker uses every script at their disposal.

Agreed. It’s still hacking- it just might not be good hacking, in more than one sense of the word. So perhaps it depends on the nature of the hacker itself!

So a good hacker is whoever you decide has good nature?

Now you’re getting it!

Glad you aren't making the rules!

On the contrary, I have already made and set the rules for this tangent into semantics. Behold, social hacking in action.

The entitlement is terrible on this site. “I should be free, but they should be coerced”. People can’t even see their own moral foibles.

Guy named Turing. It was a while back, though.

It can be argued (I think effectively) that we don’t know how to make non-general purpose computers. We can kind of fake it by putting blocking software in the way, but you can’t have math that only works when the data isn’t copyrighted.