Some people (me included) would actually like to have a secure, vetted ecosystem for software that gets installed on my phone (and even my computer). I realize that other people want something different. And think it is reasonable for people to want different approaches for different devices.

Any regulations designed to ensure the "open" model shouldn't prevent the "closed" model from existing. Your comment just seems a bit to heavy handed to my ear.

That being said, it seems to me that Apple's attempt is guaranteed to satisfy no one.

You seem to be demanding that everyone bend to your view of how the world should work.

But the fact is that Apple has a right to determine what apps are on their platform. No different to how supermarkets choose what items to stock or social networks moderate what content to show.

> No different to how supermarkets choose what items to stock

And yet, you can drive to Ikea and buy a couch without having to pay a fee to Walmart. Very curious. Want to think of a better analogy?

The whole point of all of these millions in legal fees is to even have the OPTION of an open model. Of course you'll always have walled garden option, that's apple's golden goose.

I don't think the problem is the idea of an app store offering only secure and vetted software. Apple absolutely doesn't offer that right now, but even if they ever do offer something like that would you really want that to be the only way to get software on your device?

Letting someone, no matter how trustworthy they are, decide for you what you can and cannot run on your own computer is a giving up a lot of freedom. I'd even say that was dangerous when it comes to our cell phones since we're basically stuck with just Apple or Google controlling our devices and for most people a cell phone is the only computer they own.

Did you read my entire comment? Both models should be available.

And that thing already exists - it's the app store. No one would be stopping you from choosing to only download apps from the official app store, and I assume that many people would be similar to you. They will only use the official app store because that is the vetted-by-apple place to find software.

But just because the closed and vetted ecosystem exists for users like you, doesn't mean that Apple should be able to prevent other people that don't care about that from doing what they want to with the devices they literally own.

Why can’t you and I just live happily in our walled garden without zealots of open access ruining it for us? It truly boggles me. Is it jealousy? That’s all I can come up with.

They might be Android users _because_ they don't like Apple's control.

Where is the limit on that sort of approach? Do you want the state to force everyone to set prices so that you can purchase everything at terms "reasonable" to you? How do we decide what is "reasonable"?

Given the existence of the Android alternative it is hard for me to support the argument that the government should mandate how Apple conducts its business. Even when I agree that Apple's policies have problems, I still don't think heavy-handed regulation by government is necessarily better.

That is what's unreasonable; I would be glad consumer rights are being protected by the power of the state in this case. It is hard to believe that there are so many people who prioritize the rights of the corporation to prevent competition over the rights of individual to do business with whoever they want, regardless of what hardware they own or operating system they use.

This is all consumer rights legislation. From the tone you are clearly opposed to this example, but it's not some revolutionary new concept.

If Apple suddenly changed Macs, sure. But, iOS has always been this way. Anyone who bought an iOS device over the last decade+ knows exactly the limitations and how it works. Android exists for those who want more open, yet the market has shown ~50% don't care about Android level openness.

I think it's wrong to legislate something just because it doesn't work how I want it to work, especially when an alternative does exist and consumers have spoken with their money.

Of course, this would be different if Android and iOS operated the same, or one had an overwhelming majority of the market. Because then consumers wouldn't have a choice.

What absolute nonsense is this? That is literally the entire point of legislation, to change things that aren't working how we want them to, for example to be more beneficial to society. Apple stealing money from a huge market isn't helping anyone so we fix it. Simple as.

Where do you get this idea? What is the limit on this principle? The DMA that you keep referring to is an European legal framework. Is it your opinion that everyone must bow down to what European legislators and regulators deem "beneficial"?

An argument that derives entirely from the idea that "the government has decided it is beneficial" is unpersuasive, IMHO.

Then again that could be because I’m used to iOS and find the Android UX patterns poor at best.

Therefore I'm fairly confident that they will be found noncompliant. That might take many years though, allowing Apple a few more years profits.

And I would have doubts that any regulator would want to get into the business of deciding what is a fair percentage to charge for an SDk or API.

It sucks because Apple is hiding behind intellectual property rights to protect its ability to tax the app economy.

Disney could allows 3rd party cafes in Disneyland, mandate the use of Disney logos on all products, and charge a $2 royalty of every product sold with a Disney logo.

It's a dick move but shifts the legal argument from one of monopoly / gatekeeper status to one of intellectual property rights, the latter being much more business friendly and entrenched in international agreements.

b) Microsoft and Apple both charge for developer programs and in the past it used to be significantly higher than today. So there is a precedent for this.

Replace "technologies" with "services and infrastructure" and you're close.

The DMA says that users should be able to choose other service- and infrastructure providers than Apple. Nobody's giving Dell or Microsoft a cut for every software install on a Dell PC, though I'm sure they'd love that.

Isn't that the nature of the OEM agreements they put in place with each other to package their OS?

And to your point, a judge in one of the recent cases even said they were not inclined to tell Apple how much to charge in their business.

I see the Netherlands case on third party PSPs for dating apps, and it was in the scope of apps downloaded and managed within the AppStore. Do you see any other case ruled in the EU on this subject ?

Apple made a decision early on to "give away" the ability to write and distribute (the $100 fee is nothing) apps for their store, and only take payment from payment received. So you have tons of free apps that just exist on Apple's code and infrastructure, with no cost to the companies.

I suspect they won't because the DMA pretty explicitly doesn't.

If this is an issue we want to address, then we need software/ip licensing in general to be changed.

There are other phones to chose from also. This is where the rub is. Apple has already successfully argued in the US that the phone and the software and app store are a single entity. Breaking them apart does not make sense.

Instead of paying 5% for the Unreal engine, I only want to pay 2% when I use someone Unity's networking stack. And, if Unreal isn't happy about that, I will petition the government to force them. It may sound odd or absurd, but it's still just a ip/software licensing agreement.

BTW, any PS game sold digital or physical owes Sony a licensing fee (~15% last I saw). So even if Sony is forced to allow other digital stores on the PS, they will likely still demand a licensing fee for each game sold. Where the game comes from is irrelevant, except with physical sales falling under right of first sale doctrine.

Why do certain people always always fall back on this lame response that's not even applicable.

> It may sound odd or absurd

It's indeed absurd. Unity and Unreal Engine are not gatekeepers in any sense of the word. They do not control any market, they simply sell software and services to developers. Game engines are dime a dozen and games switch between different engines surprisingly often.

This regulation addresses business dealings between Apple and developers working with their platform. Developers have a completely free choice of using Unity or Unreal Engine, it doesn't make a lick of difference to anyone except developers and artists working on the game.

Developers do not have a choice of which platform their customers are using, the developer can't "choose Android" because they need to reach users on iOS which makes up half of their customer base.

Not just in the app market, but in any market - hardware products, physical businesses, government services. All of those need to play by Apple's rules if they want to survive. This is what makes Apple the gatekeeper, they have the power to affect technological development of the entire world.

If Apple decided that apps couldn't use NFC, this could potentially hold back modernization of the entire European public transit system. If Apple blocked apps from using certain bluetooth features, this would sink their competitors in the accessories & IoT market.

It's not acceptable for one corporation to essentially hold the world hostage, hence this regulation.

Developers can certainly choose Android to develop features that Apple prevents them from doing.

If Apple was really holding back progress, it wouldn’t take long for consumers to start choosing the superior Android platform.

The DMA calls this out, explicitly:

> Gatekeepers have a significant impact on the internal market, providing gateways for a large number of business users to reach end users everywhere in the Union and on different markets. The adverse impact of unfair practices on the internal market and the particularly weak contestability of core platform services, including the negative societal and economic implications of such unfair practices, have led national legislators and sectoral regulators to act.

As for:

> Developers can certainly choose Android to develop features that Apple prevents them from doing.

You can't release something like a public transit app only on Android and you know it.

to me, i see the app store for 5 seconds between clicking a "download" link, pressing "install", and closing it.

on my computer i don't care if spotify publishes their desktop app through the apple store, their own website, command line, or some other thing. i trust it because the download link comes from spotify's website, that's the source of authority. i don't care about the thing in between clicking download and having it on my device.

Installing an extra BS "app store" app per vendor to do the distribution, dealing with another payment processor and its intricasies (for apps you pay/subscribe for, e.g. Adobe's), multiple places to manage apps and subscriptions, and so on.

>on my computer i don't care if spotify publishes their desktop app through the apple store, their own website, command line, or some other thing.

I do, and try to get as most of the stuff from the same source as possible, preferably the Mac App Store and brew.

I also hate the "update/licensing apps" running in the background for apps I use (Chrome updater is one most would be familiar with, but there are tons, especially for pro apps), and the extra multi-app download managers/stores I'm forced to use.

And don't get me started on shit like iLok.

Is an XBox 360 a general purpose computer?

Not that I would be opposed to game consoles also falling under this legislation.

Which is a necessary evil if you're shipping the hardware of that "computer" at ultra low or negative margins in order to make back the investment on SW sales.

Otherwise, the air force will buy boatloads of PS3s for a computer farm and scalpers will use PS5 for crypto mining and Sony would go bust from these hardware sales.

Apple is in a different position as it makes crazy margins even on hardware which is arare for hardware manufacturers.

Hence why we need regulations to break Apple and Google of their high horse.

Apple will retain the ability to shut off protest or encrypted communications/news/social apps, even when distributed outside of their store, by revoking the signatures.

This is a threat to a free society, not just a threat to Apple’s price-gouging revenue.

Given that they have not behaved similar with macOS we should assume the same here.

I don’t have to ever enter in my cc info. I can easily cancel subscriptions from a centralized place. Payments UX is user hostile in the wild.

(no reason they can't do it yet, but they are banks after all)