Most consumers understand those concepts and fear those things. Most understand nothing about the economic impact of monopolies and anti-competitive business behavior and the harms they cause consumers in the form of higher prices, lack of innovation, reduced choice, and poorer quality products and services.
So Apple plays off those fears by using language consumers understand, making them actually want the very monopoly that is being forced on them and actually harming them while making billions for Apple.
It's unethical behavior, no more defensible than Sam Bankman-Fried's effective altruism, a.k.a. "mostly a front." This is all right out of Apple's standard playbook.
Which is ironic, considering that the App Store is likely one of the largest malware distribution vectors on the planet.
Looking at one virus alone, the App Store distributed half of a billion copies of it to iPhones and iPads[1]. Similarly, there are multimillion dollar scams on the App Store, as well[2].
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-trial-is...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/8/22272849/apple-app-store-s...
> But now, thanks to emails published as part of Apple's trial against Epic Games, we finally know how many iPhone users were impacted: 128 million in total, of which 18 million were in the US.
> "In total, 128M customers have downloaded the 2500+ apps that were affected LTD. Those customers drove 203M downloads of the 2500+ affected apps LTD," Dale Bagwell, who was Apple's manager of iTunes customer experience at the time, wrote in one of the emails.
> Apple also disclosed the apps that included the malicious code, some incredibly popular such as WeChat and the Chinese version of Angry Birds 2.
Still a huge deal, particularly in China, but considering all the virus really did was collect some device info (less information than most ad networks) (and maybe it was able to open URLs and popups on command)[1] and it was the biggest virus on the App Store ever (that I can find), maybe not as awful as you suggest.
The scams on the App Store, yeah that's pretty bad. Though, can you point me at a marketplace as big as the App Store without loads of scams?
[1]: https://www.lookout.com/blog/xcodeghost#what-does-it-do
You are shown that this is by no means as secure as they want you to believe.
Then you argue that "of course, with a market that big!"
So basically you are proving that Apple uses the excuse of security to hold a monopoly.
Suppose there were multiple app marketplaces for iOS. Then some of them could be extremely selective by finding a niche, and thereby be more trustworthy than any unified store that has to carry a million general purpose apps with only cursory evaluation from various publishers of little or unknown reputation.
Not the person you're replying to but isn't that the point?
Nah, that would mean that what really protects iOS users from malwares is just a good sandboxing mechanism and not the "human" control of the App Store. That would also mean that bypassing the App Store shouldn’t be a real security issue.
The question is whether there’s more malware on stores like f-droid, and the answer is yes, there is of course significantly more malware.
This even pollutes the official Play Store to some extent because of course google can’t put the foot down too hard when Facebook et al can simply “start their own app stores” to bypass review if they really want to. Malware rates are much higher on android in general.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/joker...
GNU/Linux repositories.
https://nitter.net/npm_malware has twenty postings in the last 19 hours, quite far from "without".
Probably OP was thinking about the deb and rpm repositories of the main distributions but yes, NPM and the likes are other examples of large repositories.
I agree there are linux-only repos that are ~1% of that size and contain little or no malware or abuse. That's true whether you measure size in updates per day or total count of packages, so 1% seems reachable without considerable malware problems.
Another plausible explanation is that pure FLOSS repos are free fron malware.
No, it's not even a Linux package repository. Think repositories for Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc.
I don't think either Debian, Fedora or Arch are anywhere close to a million packages or a thousand updates per day. Well below 10%, so they're GNUish and 100% linux, but really bad on the size axis.
The app store has at least two classes of problems that those three don't have, and have to handle the problems at much higher scale. "Those guys manage to handle a simpler problem at much smaller scale, so it's possible for the app store too" is hardly an argument.
As long as a FLOSS repo is small and has few uploaders, it'll be safe. Hardly a model for a big and busy repo like the app store, of couse.
The distinguishing feature of Linux distributions is the existence of maintainers. Human beings who put in effort into maintaining the quality and integrity of the packages and keeping them up to date. We Linux users generally trust those people, and they stand between us and all the software developers out there. To get to us, you gotta go through them. And they generally aren't in the habit of allowing obvious malware into the software repositories. That's why we trust them in the first place.
Contrast that to repositories like npm, pypi, rubygems, cargo which are all designed so that any random person can make an account and push up any package they want. There's no checking. Accounts might be compromised by or outright bought by malicious actors. Just like popular browser extensions which get bought and converted into malware.
Maybe the issue is being so big then. Which is exactly why the EU did this in the first place. So Apple has yet another lever to comply: reduce their size.
so, is it "safer"? what's "safer" about it? or is it really just a meme apple has successfully perpetuated about it's limitations?
A year ago, I also saw a fake advertisement for a squid game. These fake advertisements have already become a meme, but they also offer to download from Google Play a slightly similar game, where after quickly clicking on the screen, the smartphone will suddenly prompt you to buy an expensive subscription and then you will not be able to cancel it, because Google does not provide for them refund. This idea comes from SMS scams since j2me platform, and judging by the comments on this game, people are still losing money, especially if they leave their phones to children.
I don't use ios and won't say whether manual moderation there helps prevent the same crap, but let's not ignore that if you're not tech-savvy, this Android security alternative is pretty easy to get around.
funnily enough, some bits of it might be worse because ios and app store are promoted as 'being secure' period, almost unequivocally - so it ends up being a thing like 'well, ios is secure and this app is on the store, so it's all good, right?", which doesn't always happen to be the case.
AFAIK, This cannot happen on Apple.
I think that this is faith, not objectivity - which is misplaced in this specific scenario.
The challenge isn’t market dynamics, but rule breaking and predation on victims.
Non tech inclined people are targets/marks for bad actors.
Malicious websites, innocuous messages, hard to avoid buttons - are all designed to circumvent good intentions.
This is resolved with rule enforcement, retributive and governance powers.
If we are adamant about competition, then apple being locked down while Android remains open is about the best you will see.
these questions are silly if you pivot them to be about other things rather than the fruit company, just like the arguments that "[company] needs to run open-infrastructure so other companies can build commercial products on [company] servers".
It's rather obvious they're being asked in bad faith with the intention of dragging down the discussion. You know perfectly well what SELinux and application sandboxing are for, and that they're net benefits.
Tech journalists have literally warned Android users that they need to be wary of apps from inside Google's walled garden.
> With malicious apps infiltrating Play on a regular, often weekly, basis, there’s currently little indication the malicious Android app scourge will be abated. That means it’s up to individual end users to steer clear of apps like Joker. The best advice is to be extremely conservative in the apps that get installed in the first place. A good guiding principle is to choose apps that serve a true purpose and, when possible, choose developers who are known entities. Installed apps that haven’t been used in the past month should be removed unless there’s a good reason to keep them around.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/joker...
Also, most of my apps come from fdroid anyway.
Many, many people game the system in terms of in-app payments, e.g. showing a link to subscribe on their website but hiding the link for the review.
If they can't catch that, why do you they can catch anything?
Apple is well aware of this and plays into it hard.
That's because people are idiots. There's nothing that iMessage does that whatsapp, telegram, kakao, line can't do. In fact, US/Canada are the only ones that actually use SMS or iMessage, as far as I know, and the rest of the world use other messaging apps. I have been living in Canada for 5 years already, and in no instance I had any issue whatsoever. I now use iPhone, but nobody talks to me via iMessage, it's all either Messenger or Whatsapp, or Instagram
If Apple is able to hold such a stronghold over Americans because of something so easily bypassed, then you deserve to be controlled, really.
Apple has been repeatedly requested to change the colour to a less ugly shade, or to give users the choice to disable the feature or to give Android apps an API of some sort so they can comply with whatever Apple's requirements and get the blue text boxes.
Apple hasn't taken action because they like the current state of affairs, they want the social ostracism of non-Apple users.
That part of the market not being separate from the other part of the market is the issue. There could be a dozen different reasons that someone might want an iPhone over some competitor, and if they buy one for that reason, they're stuck with Apple's store even if they would have chosen something else given the option.
Not only that, the markets are tied together in both directions.
Suppose that you do want to go into competition with Apple and Google and make your own competing phone platform. The biggest problem you're going to have is that people expect you to have a lot of apps available for your phone before they'll buy one, but you have to have a lot of customers before anyone will make apps for your platform.
The traditional way to solve this is by creating a cross-platform framework and then giving developers an incentive to use it, generally by making it easy to distribute apps to existing platforms. For example, Valve wants game developers to develop for SteamOS, so they provide cross-platform frameworks and a distribution system that also works on popular incumbent platforms like Windows. Then developers make games that run on Windows and incidentally also on Linux/SteamOS, and now there are more games available for SteamOS than ever before and it's the most promising competitor to Windows for PC gaming in a long time.
Conversely, Microsoft is prevented from making an app store for iOS, so they can't do that and their ambition to create a viable competitor to Apple and Android faltered. Likewise Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS and every other attempt to create a viable alternate phone platform. And then you say "just buy a different phone platform" -- as if that wasn't the problem.
I take care of Android devices used by elderly people, and they have just zero issues. Not anymore than they would have with iOS.
All this is nonsense talk trying to help the indefensible position of Apple. Most people also use Windows computers with no monopolistic app store and even though sometimes they are problems they almost always come from user errors. Most of the time it's poor choices, generally from greedy behavior (trying to get stuff for free without knowing much).
If a user doesn't know what it's doing, it can ask someone for help or stick with Apple's App Store if that suits him. Allowing other possibilities for more competent people doesn't change this fact one bit.
Her phones become really slow because of this.
In fact, their notification system makes it complicated to just allow specific behavior and not something else. It's not better than the notification settings in typical web apps. As a day one user of iOS, I find it funny that you complain about notification out of all things, because if there is one place where iOS is just as fucked as every other platform it's notifications...
Nowadays I have resorted to basically denying notification for everything but the few stuff where they are actually relevant...
Also, you should correctly set things up for your mother and refuse notification prompt for every website and just whitelist the few that might be usefull..
Sorry but the actual statistics from mobile security companies that track this stuff show otherwise. From Nokia's Threat Intelligence Report 2020 (https://pages.nokia.com/T005JU-Threat-Intelligence-Report-20...):
Among smartphones, Android devices are the most commonly targeted by malware. Android devices were responsible for 26.64% of all infections, Windows/PCs for 38.92%, IoT devices for 32.72% and only 1.72% for iPhones.
Android malware infections are an order of magnitude higher compared to iPhones.
(I tried to look for data from more recent years but iPhones don't show up in the reports after 2020.)
They need to “investigate”
Especially the constant mentioning of the "EU" when this applies to the EEA, leaving out two entire countries. I hope they actually realize this internally.
That playbook really gets around huh.
> If someone posts an app before you that is to similar to what you post, they will tell you no.
search "2048 game" and let me know how many similar games they said no to.
> search "2048 game" and let me know how many similar games they said no to.
I don’t know how old the rules are for this. I just know it currently exists. Also, it’s possible that a number of them were submitted at the exact same time and there was a race condition allowing the market to be flooded.
People test an app out on Android. If it works, they will make an iOS app.
That would make innovation across mobile devices, not android/apple. Wouldnt it?
For example, they force you to go find your country's D-U-N's number provider, which usually costs time and money -- unlike the US, where looking up your own number is free. Then they verify it. Apple just looks it up for you, for free.
When you register as a person, Apple just requires basic supporting documentation and doesn't require a real device. Google requires that you have a specific brand of device in-hand to sell an app, and won't let you use smaller, less known brands (at least in the US, even if the brand is popular where you live). This means you need to drop nearly $1,000 USD on a phone, just to make a free app. Apple is $99, all-in.
The play store (for me) was approx 955 + 25 + 15 to get an app listed.
So no, Apple is probably a less expensive gamble. Especially if you already have access to a mac (rented or paid).
>you’re arguing from imaginary evidence
Thanks for the laugh.
iOS apps bring in more money and that absolutely shows in the time and effort companies put into their apps. The big names (FAANG) might have equality but once you leave the top apps the quality difference can be stark.
When someone claims he's the only one who can protect the public I immediately see some question marks.
So far, it's all been speculation, even drawing parallels with Android or Windows doesn't help because it's not similar enough. I would expect a broader ecosystem or additional facets to an existing ecosystem to also cause an expansion of questionable quality and practises, but that applies to everything, not just mobile phones.
— C.S. Lewis
I would agree with you that Apple isn't the only entity that can provide that type of vetting process but it also seems clear to me that a vetting process is actually a useful and desirable service.
And now they cracked down on small developers to revert that. So it's not a totally invalid point from Apple.
What, their shitty app sandbox isn't all that good or something? Methinks the real reason is money.
But tbf, even though I can install APKs on Android I don't really do that as there's still the fear of bad actors; maybe the Android sandbox is safe & secure but I don't _know_ that, they haven't _told_ me explicitly about it. And if it's not safe for Android too, then why not?
That’s not really the point. On the Web you have a single google.com, and on the AppStore you have a single "Google" app. If you allow multiple sources for apps you break this idea of a unique registry and allow anyone to create an app named "Google" or any other well-known brand. There’s no way of ensuring the "Google" app you’re looking at is the genuine one anymore.
Unfortunately it's not really perfect solution for the web either as plenty of people still get scammed by fake urls + not bothering to check who the cert is for/from...
> What, their shitty app sandbox isn't all that good or something? Methinks the real reason is money.
Or maybe just because designing a good sandbox is really hard. Look at snap packages on linux. They're one of the most common way of sandboxing linux apps and come with significant limitations compared to unsandboxed software.
"selinux had an escape once therefore it's useless!" no, that's not how that works and you know it.
"gatekeepers should have an obligation to interoperate with third-party systems!" oh so google needs to run open SMTP relays to allow third-parties to build commercial operations on google's infrastructure and send mail to google's users? google needs to not block unwanted commercial solicitation from third-party operators because they "have to interoperate"?
etc etc
in this case - ctrl-f for "sandbox" and virtually every single one of the comments is some variant of the same obviously bait/flamewar comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143802
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141456
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39140427
the discourse is always really bad in these threads and frankly a ton of it is android users who can't help but roll in the shit and sling insults constantly ("apple sheeple who only care about blue bubbles", etc) and we've completely normalized them acting out (both as a society and here on HN) for some reason.
The discourse is on why we accept that browsers can sandbox websites but we can't place the same amount of trust in sandboxing of apps and historically Android has been better at that than Apple because they actually allow you to do it in the first place, the caveat being that it's not really made clear if this is "safe" or not.
Apple is one step behind Android on this but they're _both_ many steps behind making it transparent to the user that "installing any app from anywhere is as safe as visiting any random website".
It's the same sales pitch that Canonical is using to justify its centralized snap store.
Tim Cook is parroting Steve Jobs when he says that Apple deeply cares about users' privacy and security. Jobs was smart enough to realize that emphasising security and privacy protections would increase sales because Apple is a company which sells computer products instead of advertising solutions and services like Google and others(although Apple is increasingly thinking about how to monetize their Big Data).
Because when you know how things work and what they are capable of, the last thing you want to do is fight with them so that they work. At least, someone who doesn't know better cares much less because he is clueless about the existence of a better way.
Jobs was in the business of selling bicycles for the mind, not dumb consumption machines. The latter development of basic consumer focused products is just after the success of the iPhone and happened basically precisely when he left (while officially he was still managing apple, it's pretty clear that after the launch of the first iPad, jobs didn't have a lot of impact at Apple his health condition not allowing).
It also made sense because before Apple was something to exhibit to display wealth nobody that wasn't competent enough with technology would have spent so much money on it. Which is exactly why current Apple offering is absolutely terrible for its price.
Most of the crap told on Apple nowadays are complete memes from the second wave of Apple cultist (most of them arriving with the iPhone) that completely ignore the true history of Apple and how it got to launch such successful products.
Competent in other fields of endeavour, sure.
Jobs was in the business of selling computers that looked (and worked) good to people who would otherwise hate computers. Dealing with geeks was always (and still is) a necessary evil, so he'd have enough of an ecosystem to sell to "normies".
Jobs fundamentally hated the Macintosh and tried very hard to get away from it very early (Newton, anyone?). Once he got back on the saddle, his first Big Idea was to wrap them into colourful shells, and fuck the tech inside (jesus, was the first iMac dog-slow!). His second idea was to co-opt FOSS and Java developers, again to have enough geeks building stuff for his platform; they would be unceremoniously dropped once the iPod got traction and he could finally get to run the "better Sony" he always wanted to have.
The rest is just stories he told to power his reality-distortion field.
NeXT contradicts that.
Though, I like how you mention he always wanted to be a "better Sony." That's definitely on point.
The original iMac hardware specs were also pretty reasonable for when it came out, no?
> Jobs fundamentally hated the Macintosh and tried very hard to get away from it very early (Newton, anyone?).
Jobs had nothing to do with the Newton, it was started about a year after he was forced out, Sculley coined the term Personal Digital Assistant, and it was one of the first things killed when Jobs got back to Apple.
Apple Watch, Apple TV and HomePod would like a word.
And now you know why I call Tim Apple the iPope.
Remember all the times when a computer could be compromised via a bug in the jvm that was supposed to safely run the java applets?
Normally it would be fixed immediately on linux and windows, and take months on osx because apple had their own jvm (that had the same bugs because it was just a fork).
> The changes also include new disclosures informing EU users of the risks associated with using alternatives to the App Store’s secure payment processing.
There are 22 instances of the word "risks" on that page. Pathetic.
In any case, the Internet does not have to pay Apple to be discoverable and accessible.
Firefox, too.
Phones are with you constantly with GPS, movement, cameras, and microphones regularly accessible by apps, sometimes persistently. It’s also a platform handling SMS and Bluetooth and other weakly secure protocols.
That doesn't mean it isn't a sandboxed compared to more traditional computing environments - it just means it's less restrictive than a browser.
Why are people so obsessed with "forcing" Apple to adopt the same approach that gave us the dumpster tire fire that is Windows?
If you don't want a device where the hardware and software were designed to work together, just buy from one of the literal thousands of other vendors who took your approach.
Just this week she had to install a work app for scheduling from Googles Store and got duped into a fake clone that installed 4 other apps with repeated pop up apps emulating a signup wizard.
Those non standard androids are far far more worrying and the Google App Store is way less locked down.
If my dad was in the EU I’d have to tell him never to install an app using anything but the Apple App Store.
Because it does create security risks.
App code in 3rd party app stores is not going to be reviewed, which means anyone is free to craft a rootkit embedded in an app and release it to a 3rd party app store.
Enjoy!
I never knew that every app gets root access on iOS and that the security model hinged entirely in Apple's control of the App Store.
Oh no! You mean exactly like it has been on a mac for decades?
As it is, there is only one channel and no competition, so we don't know what the malware situation would be like in the absence of Apple's monopoly.
Same reason "McDonalds hamburgers" aren't a market. They're just a branded product within a larger "smartphones" market.
> How do you define market, then, if that's not a market?
Same way the FTC does:
> all goods or services that buyers view as close substitutes
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
An Android is a close substitute for an iPhone, just like a Ford is a close substitute for a Toyota. People switch between them all the time.
Competition is not a panacea.
In this case, there is already competition between distribution channels, the issue is predators/malafide behavior who will always be able to run circles around channels.
I suspect that the cost of review is not apparent - review at scale is going to be outsourcing. Thats a whole bunch of contracting, management, and sheer work that new distribution channels will not be able to afford.
Adding competition doesnt help. At some point, it simply creates more vectors of attack.
The situation you describe is better served by a policing force, that stops bad actors.
Not only does it happen all the time, it's often the only way to sort out what legislation means in practice.
A US-centric perspective, stereotypically, would be like 'my Starbucks coffee is too cold, I am suing'. You can have common law without sue-happy individuals.
No, the judges rule with what they have, based on the case’s specifics and the "legislator’s intent" underpinning existing law.
Although it does not become law, their ruling can be used as precedent in later similar cases, until the legislator catches up.
Likewise in civil law the judge isn't simply a referee, they're meant to actively investigate. While in common law lawyers get to do a big show by asking various questions, in civil law the questions are asked by the judge and the lawyers only exist to make an argument.
For people, yes. For businesses, absolutely not.
In the EU Apple could have sorted this out with regulators without having to involve lawsuits and legal proceedings.
Unfortunately Apple has a strong deeply held conviction about its walled garden which it’s unwilling to compromise on.
Tim Cook’s hundreds of millions in salary/bonus are dependent on Apple being able to extract a 30% cut out of the entire app and media ecosystem.
Apple will as shown here do their best to comply the least with the intent of the legislation, but it's up to the legislators if it is acceptable.
E.g., if notarization turns out to be used for central gate keeping by declining specific apps in the human review step or by using it to impede the process for apps intended for third-party stores, that would be a violation.
So there can be multiple layers to this, and ultimately I don't think the EU really works as a robust legal system any more, there are so many politically driven cases where the courts follow the politics not the law.
Unless you also want to argue that the Irish courts are compromised of course.
"The first thing to note is that no one — including Apple — knows if this plan abides by the DMA. This is, unfortunately, par for the course for the European Union. Regulations are passed that insist on certain outcomes, with various carve-outs and definitions, and it is up to the companies impacted to figure out how to meet them; only then do the powers-that-be decide whether or not said company is in compliance. This is, needless to say, an insane way to write regulations, but when you consider the E.U.’s insistence on contradictory end goals — increasing competition while insisting on an absolutist approach to user privacy, for example — you can understand how the burden ends up falling on companies to come up with their own solutions. This also, needless to say, opens up the door to massive loopholes (like the fact that Apple believes it can still enforce App Tracking Transparency restrictions on apps not in the App Store)."
I'm certain they have the best legal team that money can buy, but I'm equally certain that that legal team is under the sort of pressure that happens when a multinational corporation is looking at the prospect of possibly losing billions of dollars in zero-effort recurring profit. I also think these sort of behaviors are damaging their brand, which is certainly Apple's most valuable asset - which is to say that I think they're acting in an irrational way, because of the amount of money at stake.
I think you're vastly overestimating how much people outside of the HN crowd cares... or even knows what you're talking about for that matter.
I have a lot of Apple kit, and the Vision Pro is hugely tempting. Unfortunately, Apples’ shenanigans the past few years, starting with “we will scan all pictures you want to send to iCloud on your phone” which signalled to me that Apple feels fine about unilaterally altering our agreement whenever they feel like, have increasingly soured me on their brand to the point where we as a household and as a business were discussing to stop purchasing new Apple products and services. Their recent actions, both in terms of their Epic situation as well as their reaction to these new EU regulations, have cemented that decision.
Unlike every other cloud photo service, Apple invited community discussion before implementing it. Apple heard the feedback and didn't implement it, but people still criticise Apple as if they did. What should I conclude from this? That criticism of Apple is frequently false, disingenuous and devoid of context?
Pretty much every other comparable mainstream ecosystem has most of the same vices. Most are arguably worse in my opinion. Epic still haven't satisfactorily explained why they haven't pursued Sony or Nintendo with the same arguments.
The olden days equivalent of the HN crowd (Slashdot? Kuro5hin?) hated Microsoft's behaviour but had to build on their platforms because there wasn't an alternative that would pay the bills. So Microsoft kept raking in profits and probably thought that everything was OK and there wasn't an issue.
But that ill-feeling meant that as soon as an alternative emerged (in this case Apple, powered by open-source, Unix, the web - and later smartphones with the iPhone and Android) there was an exodus and Microsoft's attempts to regain ground (IIS, Windows Phone) were widely ignored.
Apple is on the same ground now (and I say this as an Apple-lover). They are pulling in huge amounts of money through their behaviour but I have no doubt, as soon as an alternative appears (probably through some platform shift) they will come to regret it.
UPDATE: and it would be ironic if the Vision Pro was the thing that triggered the platform shift. If the Vision Pro works well as a Mac alternative (a proper productivity environment but with an infinite screen), once others implement the same idea effectively (and maybe not quite as well as Apple has) it could be the catalyst for developers (and hence apps) jumping ship.
Since there is only one alternative, I am going to assume that this is a rethorical question designed to invite a discussion about how the alternative is significantly worse in your point of view. Not an interesting debating technique, to be honest.
> Pretty much every other company with a mechanism to send photos to the cloud scans your pictures for CSAM right now and nobody cares. They've been doing it for many years.
There are alternatives available that don't do this, but again, your point appears to be written simply to elicit this specific reponse. Your "pretty much every other company" makes it clear that you are also aware that options exist.
> Nobody cares.
Your next paragraph indicates that, actually, a _lot_ of people cared.
> Apple invited community discussion before implementing it.
Not really. Apple made an announcement, and in the face of an absolute, unmitigated _shitstorm_ of criticism from pretty much _everyone_, they -after fighting an incredibly hard and expensive PR battle- grudgingly called a temporary truce and relented on some of the items they wanted to implement. To frame this as "Apple worked with the community and listened" is... fancy.
The point of that debacle, and this sub-thread, is that Apple is irrepairibly damaging their brand. In the "we will scan all your photos on your device to make sure the content is acceptable" story, they destroyed (literally forever, in the eyes of many people) their branding message that they were on _my_ side, when it comes to privacy and unwanted intrustion of all vendors, including Apple, into my device. That was literally the reason I switched from Android, and by retroactively changing that deal unilaterally on devices I already purchased, they instantly and irrepairably invalidated my only reasons for buying into their overpriced and closed walled garden.
In this new debacle with the EU and their -frankly- childish reponse they once again showed their disdain for their users.
Apple sucks.
Devolving a discussion into meta commentary about debating techniques is not an interesting debating technique either. There isn't only one other alternative to the Apple ecosystem, I was asking an actual question. It wasn't a rhetorical question. But even if it was, are you seriously saying that rhetorical questions are a point of criticism in persuasive writing? Seriously?
Then you want to take issue with "Nobody cares" as though it was intended to be literal rather than idiomatic. For the record I was being idiomatic. I hope this clarifies things.
As for your alternative interpretation of what went down in the great Apple CSAM scanning controversy, none of what you said strictly conflicts with what I said. The core facts aren't in dispute, but I accept that people interpreted motives differently. Do you seriously think Apple would have made a big song and dance about their proposal around CSAM scanning if the intent was to implement it regardless? (Apologies for the rhetorical question.) Obviously they wouldn't have. They would have just subtly changed the license terms and implemented it without telling anyone.
It's amazing how quickly people forget why Apple wanted to implement the initial fingerprinting stage on-device, rather than in the cloud as all their major competitors had already done. Disdain for users' privacy, really? Nothing could be further from the truth. The whole point of doing it on device was, as I'm sure you remember, protecting privacy by having industry standard scanning while remaining compatible with end-to-end encryption.
I think the reason why people are angry at Apple in spite of their climbdown is because Apple did a lot of damage announcing it the way they did.
Far from "inviting a debate" on how or whether this can be done in a safe and privacy friendly way, they made an announcement explaining exactly what they were going to do and how it was going to work.
The message was received loud and clear by politicians who are up against critics disputing the technical feasibility of surveilling the entire population in a safe and privacy friendly way.
Apple has dealt a hammer blow to privacy advocates. The effects of Apple's announcement have been percolating through parliaments and law enforcement agencies all over the world ever since.
Add to that the effects of Apple's side-loading ban, which is hands complete control over what software people can and cannot install to authoritarian rulers across the planet, their decision to hand over Chinese iCloud operations (including encryption keys) to a state owned company, and their willingness to make questionable security claims in defense of their own business model.
The picture that emerges is not pretty.
At the same time, Apple provides privacy protections to hundereds of millions of people who would not otherwise have them - realistically speaking.
If mobile OS competition was between Google, Microsoft and Samsung, there would not be a setting to blanket disable all tracking requests. Markets often end up in an equilibrium where certain choices simply don't exist.
Regulating this space without doing more harm than good is very difficult. We're going to have to wait and see whether the EU has done a good job this time.
> So apple responded by allowing developers to apply to place exactly one text-only (non-hyperlink), static, reference to an outside payment source on one page in an app
They allow an actual button that links directly to a website[0]. I mean the article by Apple that describes the terms and options literally is titled “Distributing apps in the U.S. that provide an external purchase link” and there a plenty of examples provided.
> and further added a new term that developers must also pay Apple 27% of all revenue from these off-site purchases.
Both the district court[1] as well as the appellate court that later affirmed the ruling[2] spelled out in clear plain language that developers would still owe Apple the commission, that Apple would be able to audit developers and that it’s all legal because its payment for the use of Apple’s IP. Only difference is that the courts assumed Apple would simply charge 30% instead of the discounted 27%.
Some examples:
> In essence, Apple uses the DPLA to license its IP to developers in exchange for a $99 fee and an ongoing 30% commission on developers' iOS revenue.
> As the district court noted, in a world where Apple maintains its distribution restriction but payment processing is opened up, Apple would still be contractually entitled to its 30% commission on in-app purchasers. Apart from any argument by Epic, the district court "presume[d]" that Apple could "utilize[e] a contractual right to audit developers ... to ensure compliance with its commissions."
> Because the court upheld the app-distribution restriction, Apple would still be entitled to its 30% commission on in-app purchases within apps downloaded from the App Store. On its own initiative, the district court floated the idea of Apple permitting multiple in-app payment processors while reserving a right to audit developers to ensure compliance with the 30% commission.
> Suffice it to say, IAP is not merely a payment processing system, as Epic Games suggests, but a comprehensive system to collect commission and manage in-app payments.
> First, and most significant, as discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple's intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
0: https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...
1: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
2: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/2...
Kinda the way Apple doesn’t want to pay ATT for the same thing.
Being a Mac user since the 90's, it is unfortunate what Apple has become. However, this is often happens when a charismatic leader leaves the company (in one way or another). From what is seen in the the process of how so many startup at YC went from little company to transnational corporation, and what people's reaction to them have changed over the course of the year as well as the influence of funding and corporate culture has on a company are also very telling.
Now days I'm sticking to linx BSD F-Droid for personal stuff even though they are not as user friendly in the UI aspect.
It has everything to do with when a company is an outsider it tries to be consumer friendly, but then when it becomes the dominant player then it adopts all the characteristics all dominant players do of trying to attract as much rent from their business as they can, users be damned.
This has absolutely nothing to do with a charismatic leader or founder.
Steve Jobs was notoriously the most hard-ass negotiator you'd ever meet. The way Apple is dealing with the EU here is probably exactly how he would have done it, or maybe he might have been even worse.
He created incredibly user-friendly machines, but in the business world he was incredibly ruthless.
When you come from a place of "We have all the right answers and your views don't matter" like how Steve Jobs operated, you can see the harm that mind set is causing in the world today.
The right term for this is malicious compliance.
I'm reasonably sure Apple didn't reveal most of their compliance plans to EU, since they will ask Apple to implement the most strict interpretation of the regulation and it would be headaches in the court if there's any evidence that Apple knowingly ignored such requests.
Given that Apple had already been shipping standard USB C ports with zero restrictions starting with the 2021 iPad Pro, this conspiracy theory made no sense.
Given different roles and low numbers of iPad Pro's vs. iPhones, I don't think any cross over assumptions can be made.
The iPad Air as well as the plain old iPad had also gotten standard USB C ports with zero restrictions before this particular conspiracy theory became popular.
If the iPhone were to disappear tomorrow and Apple were banned from ever making phones, Apple's moat would most likely collapse.
If the iPad went away tomorrow, Apple would just lose billions or tens of billions of dollars in revenue and not much else would change.
None of them were from confirmed sources or even cross referenced.
As for a commissioner seriously reacting to it; your local police department is more professional when it comes to commenting on active investigations.
They mainly act like politicians that want to look though in crime. Vestager is a great example of how much PR the average commissioner is willing to utilize, even when they get wiped out of court.
Source? This has conspiracy theory written all over it. My take is that the rumor mill was just flat out wrong about this like they often are.
EDIT: To be clear here, I don’t deny that an EU commissioner sent a letter but I doubted the existence of these secret (and rumored) plans that prompted it e.g. seems out of character for Apple given iPads have had USB C for some time without such restrictions.
Gotta love people so brainwashed they can’t imagine government interfering with big tech
https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-eus-vestager-wa...
> It was rumored in February that Apple may be planning to limit charging speeds and other functionality of USB-C cables that are not certified under its "Made for iPhone" program. […] In response to this rumor, European Commissioner Thierry Breton has sent Apple a letter warning the company that limiting the functionality of USB-C cables would not be permitted and would prevent iPhones from being sold in the EU when the law goes into effect.
I would posit that a commenter with a sincere wish to dispel “conspiracy theories” might instead take a moment to do that search themselves instead of posting this (pardon me) inflammatory remark!
you speak of a “secret” Made For iPhone program as if that’s still some conspiracy – https://mfi.apple.com/
my read of the article is that the EU commissioner advised Apple that if the company attempted to negate the USB-C regulations by only allowing full access to Apple devices connected via a cable with an Apple-approved MFi chip… that indeed they would be held accountable by the EU. had that been the case, it would be Apple continuing its regime of connector control over its users’ devices, as it has done up til now by insisting on MFi-certified Lightning cables
Seems like this is going to become increasingly common as Apple clings to their rent-seeking practices in every jurisdiction that dawdles on antitrust enforcement.
I would love for this thread to accomplish something other than meta rifraff, so — I’ve never worked as an Apple Store floor sales person, but:
> In the 90's, a USB cable was just four braided wires – literal copper wires which link copper pins in your [computer] with your [printer]. Two of them carried the data, and the other carried power and ground. This worked, and it was an affordable, easy-to-implement standard which spread like dandelion seeds on the wind.
> Now in the 2020's, we have USB-C. Have you ever had a kind of “friend” who tries to be “everything to everyone“? Well, that‘s USB-C.
> We fixed some things with USB A and mini – er, micro – B, like how hard they were to plug in, and how you invariably seemed to find yourself holding them upside down more than 50% of the time!
> And, well, engineers being engineers, and USB standing for universal serial bus, we tried to also solve all other problems at the same time. Like you couldn’t use a USB cable for video, or to power an air fryer.
> So, these days, USB cables are more than braids of copper wire. They are “active” cables! meaning they have a microchip inside. Even our cables became little computers.
> And we kept backwards compatibility with USB, so that if you use a plug adapter, you can take an original 90’s USB mouse and plug it right into your brand new iPhone n±1!
> Or nowadays, you might grab the wrong cable in your kitchen, and plug your toaster oven into your iPhone. yikes! I know you came in to the store today with a simple-seeming question, and we’ve been standing here now for minutes, and I apologize – but now I hope I can answer your question about why this cable isn’t recognized by your new phone.
> When an active cable is plugged in, the chip inside the cable “negotiates” with the chip inside the device. For a device you hold in your hand and use without thinking about it, like your phone, we have made the negotiator more stringent than we did in our tablet. :)
I love that the same power adapter I use to charge one computer works with all my computers, my portable game console, my headphones, my portable speaker, my phone, my tablet, my flashlight, my battery bank, and more. I like that the USB-C port in my car can natively charge my laptop, at least when asleep/powered off, without needing an AC inverter to run a 19V brick.
There's no way you're going to convince me my life with dozens different sizes of barrel power adapters with different voltages/polarizations, micro + mini USB, and more proprietary power connectors were better. You're never going to convince me having the vendor lock-in of proprietary laptop docks was better than just a single cable to do it all. I can't wait to retire my last few barrel-type power devices.
Well, generally speaking, you can't use "just a single cable". Because a USB-C cable only carrying a power charge would still technically be a USB-C cable. And you would never know until you tried to connect your display with it
Sure, I'm not literally talking about a single cable I'm taking from one port to another port, but the fact I can just plug my laptop into my monitor and get all of that is awesome. And if I bought a good cable I could totally do that. The fact I'm able to charge all my devices off my laptop charger is awesome. The fact one could cheap out and buy a cable that wouldn't work with all the features of the monitor/laptop link doesn't make that less awesome. I just use the included cables with the docks or what not or make sure to buy a cable that does what I need if replacing/upgrading and it's not a problem.
You're still not convincing me the existence of cheap cables that can't do it all makes having several different cables and power adapters a better time. In one case you're absolutely forced to have them be separate every time, in another it's only that they're separate if you're buying cheap bullshit online from trash vendors.
I do, too. However, what I wrote is a fact. Almost everything in the USB-C spec is optional, and you can't deduce which optional parts a USB-C cable supports from the cable alone.
For example, here's a charging USB-C cable with max transfer speed of 480 MB/s: https://www.clasohlson.com/se/USB-C-kabel-2m-USB-C-till-USB-...
Good luck connecting it to your monitor. And no, it's not a "cheap bullshit from trash vendors". This is literally in the standard
For your link, this is a good vendor. They're (presumably) accurately describing the features of the cable. If it matches your needs, buy it! But clearly its specs don't meet my needs for my monitor, so I wouldn't buy it if I was replacing the cable for my monitor. Not that I even needed to buy a separate cable, the dock/monitor/etc all came with cables that matched the device's needs and have so far lasted many years. Use the included cable and it is not a problem. The line about "cheap bullshit from trash vendors" are vendors selling cables that don't meet their listed specs on the store listing. Which is why I don't buy cables from AliExpress or Amazon or others, I can't trust the cable to be what it says it is.
Even back in the day pre-USB-C you'd still have to check the specs on the cable. What voltage does your laptop run at? How many watts is it going to pull? What size barrel? Polarity? If I reached into a bin full of various "laptop chargers", what are the odds it would work with your device? Pretty damn slim! And what are the odds that power brick would charge your phone as well? Zero!
Reach into a bin full of USB-C-based laptop chargers, what are the odds it'll work with your USB-C laptop? Extremely high! What are the odds it'll charge your phone as well? Extremely high!
Which experience is better?
This whole issue is largely because we're starting to get to the point where the data transfer speeds we're hoping for is getting pretty insane from a physics standpoint, and it doesn't make sense for every cable to be built to that level. If I'm getting a cable that I know I'm only ever going to want to charge a few watt device off of, I don't need it to be built to the spec of many many gigabits of throughput. This is even getting to be true with digital video cables in general. I've got some DisplayPort cables on my desk here. What max resolution and refresh rate do they support? How about these HDMI cables? Did they even bother listing their specs on the sheathing? Nope! But should they have just created a new connector every few years requiring all new cables and have monitors with a dozen different ports on them?
I'd say having different cable specs that are clearly known when originally sold is an OK compromise for continued growth without needing new connectors. This issue of "not all cables support all things" as some reason why the old way of having a million different cables and connectors was better is focusing on such a tiny problem compared to how much better practically everything else is. Are you seriously arguing for the barrel and other proprietary connectors, different power adapters for everything? Are you seriously arguing for having either proprietary docks or needing to plug in several cables going from one desk to another?
In the end, I am using one cable to connect my laptop to my whole desk setup, right now. This is better than the past where the same setup would have required a bunch of cables. Sure, I do have other cables in the house that would physically connect but not do all the things, but once again that never happens because I'm not trying to use only one cable that I don't know the specs on to try and do everything. And FWIW, I could do that "one cable to do everything" if I picked the right cable at the start. I could just use this cable on the monitor to charge at the nightstand, in the car, with the battery bank, to charge all my other devices, etc.
You're going off on weird tangents that have literally nothing with what I'm saying.
Like, cool, you found a USB-C cable I can't use with my monitor. So I won't buy that one, I'll buy a different one. They're clearly spec'd on nice retailers, so buying the right one isn't an issue, once again unless you're with crappy stores.
This big "issue" is way better of a problem than how things were before. I'll take this trade any day.
I mean I guess technically executives did conspire to break the law, so correct, they do that all the time.
Yes, we know they talked with the EU, but we don't know the content of those discussions. It's easy to assume they were checking whether their proposed implementation would satisfy the regulators. It's equally likely, even more likely, they were gathering information, posturing and probing to see how the EU would react, to gauge how best to craft their scheme to outwit them and what they could or could not easily get away with.
You can hold a negotiation and still screw the other side over afterwards - isn't that actually the best way to do it? Holding a meeting first to learn what cards your opponent has in their hand is just a better way to play any game.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-s...
Besides, how many app updates are there per day? The amount they pay an app reviewer x n reviewers is going to be _nothing_, a drop in the bucket of what they make from the app store overall.
App Store is a cash cow so they'll protect it viciously; I expect Apple will win this one through their usual gaslighting/cult personalities unless EU is willing to come down hard enough on 'em. Ban sales of Apple products that do not conform, easy.
It doesn't affect consumers in any negative way, only positive.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-01/apple-s-a...
10% was not commission-free. App Store commissions are between 15% and 30% depending on the size of the developer. That would be between $165B and $330B revenue for Apple from commissions.
Nobody knows how profitable the App Store is to Apple. "It’s a question that investors would love to know the answer to, because it addresses the entire business model of the App Store. Apple does not disclose any detailed financial results of the App Store,". "Barnes calculated that the App Store had hefty profit margins, which increased to 78% in 2019, up from 75% in 2018" [2]
App Store revenue is still growing (not least with inflation) so the number of 2023 was likely even higher.
~80% margin on $165-$330B revenue in 2022 would be $132-$264B. So my original number of $100B may actually have been on the low side.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/31/apple-touts-1-1-trillion-i...
[2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a...
If 90% of billings were commission-free, that means $110 billion had Apple's commission applied to it. 110 * 0.3 = 33 billion of revenue at most, or 16.5 billion if we use the 15% commission.
> Apple also said iOS app developers have earned more than $320 billion on the App Store from 2008 to 2022, a jump from the $260 billion reported in 2021.
> Apple says its App Store ecosystem generated $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2022
I'm having a hard time reconciling these two statements. It's been a long day, but what am I missing to make sense of this?
For example, Spotify makes money from people streaming music to iOS devices, but they do not allow you to upgrade from a free account to a Premium account through their iOS app.
Since Spotify handles subscription purchases outside of their iOS app and their app is free, they pay nothing to Apple under the current system.
Afaik, pointing users to subscriptions and payments outside of the app is explicitly not allowed. Telling the user it's cheaper to buy outside the app is not allowed, etc. Such blatantly predatory rules, I'm surprised it's taken this long for a wider discussion to start about it.
I guess it's because whenever you ask people that buy Apple gear they're all "That's fine! Don't you shit talk Apple, they can do what they want! They do what's best for us!" Stockholm syndrome lmao.
Nope. Under the old rules any company with a free app used to access subscription content didn't have to pay anything unless they took payments through their app.
Netflix would be another example.
> pointing users to subscriptions and payments outside of the app is explicitly not allowed
It's definitely allowed now, since that's the only point on which Epic won their case vs. Apple.
They used to report this number as sales they "facilitated". A far more accurate descriptor. But now that they are engaged in a PR battle with various governments they have taken to embellishment.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apples-app-store-ecos...
I guess that since those apps came from the App Store to begin with, they are counting that as revenue that the App Store "generated"? Talk about playing word games.
According to the TC article you linked, Apple previously released this figure phrased as sales that it "facilitated"[1]. A much more accurate, and far less braggadocios descriptor.
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I see a huge difference between "generated" and "facilitated". Bad Apple.
[1]https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apples-app-store-ecos...
You're spot on.
Seems more like "this is the money we weren't able to use our monopoly to extract value from, aren't we soooo altruistic!".
>The Company’s total net sales were $383.3 billion and net income was $97.0 billion during 2023.
Because $97B is < $100B, it is impossible for AAPL to have earned $100B net income just from the App Store (because we also know its other divisions do not lose money, again according to the 10-K they filed).
> Therefore, the Company accounts for all third-party application–related sales on a net basis by recognizing in Services net sales only the commission it retains.
So the commissions are <=$85B. Given the $1.1T number is from Apple, that implies the average commission rate is <15% (many categories of app excluded from commissions perhaps?).
They list gross margin for services to be $60B but I don't see where they break down net profit with greater granularity or "per division" (the word division does not seem to appear in the 10-K). For example they could make $80B in App Store commission, sell $5B in other services, make $80B in profit from commission, but lose $20B on other services, and that would still be consistent with the numbers in the 10-K, right? And those numbers presumably don't include indirectly related operating expenses which totaled $55B.
Apple has not revealed how profitable the App Store really is, but either way it's a LOT of profit, certainly enough to warrant expensive attorneys and stalling implementing this legislation in good faith for as long as possible.
From [1] ( The Link you referenced )
>This $1.1 trillion breaks down as $910 billion in total billings and sales from the sale of physical goods and services, $109 billion from in-app advertising and $104 billion for digital goods and services.
They take 15% to 30% of $104 Billion. That is at best $31.2B. In case this isn't even clear. Apple collect ZERO on the $910 physical goods and services such as Uber and ZERO on the $109 In-App Advertising revenue.
>~80% margin on $165-$330B revenue in 2022 would be $132-$264B. So my original number of $100B may actually have been on the low side.
It is 80% margin on the at best $31.2B revenue. Not the $104 Billion Sales.
Apple reported FY 2022 Services Revenue as $78B. You cant have a Net Profits more than your total Services Revenue Income.
People can upvote something because of various reasons. I don't lurk around and upvote only "correct" comments.
Which country do they hide their business in that doesn't require accounts be published on a business's principle activity?
> Yes, we know they talked with the EU, but we don't know the content of those discussions.
Geeze, that's a lot of money. Out of curiosity, how bribeable are EU regulators? If this were the US, they'd just make a few campaign donations and it'd all go away and the citizens would just shrug at the business as usual in DC.
Do EU regulators typically have more integrity and teeth?
But you can always offer to look after them when they retire. Give them a nice non-exec role, or perhaps make them vice‑president of global affairs and communications....
According to the linked article he actually did work for the European Commission (part of the EU executive) as a civil servant.
"He took up a post at the European Commission in April 1994, working in the TACIS aid programme to the former Soviet Union. For two years, Clegg was responsible for developing direct aid programmes in Central Asia and the Caucasus worth €50 million. He was involved in negotiations with Russia on airline overflight rights, and launched a conference in Tashkent in 1993 that founded TRACECA—an international transport programme for the development of a transport corridor for Europe, the Caucasus and Asia. Vice-President and Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan then offered him a job in his private office, as a European Union policy adviser and speechwriter. As part of this role, Clegg was in charge of the EC negotiating team on Chinese and Russian accession talks to the World Trade Organization.[33]"
We would like a big technology sector. A 15-30% rent on that isn't making things easier.
Looks like they're happy to pay fines to maintain their monopoly.
/flagrant-speculation
That would be following the Microsoft playbook when it comes to corporate crime in the EEA/EU.
I am pretty sure that FB also has many lawyers, but they were repeatedly violating law. Sometimes clearly, blatantly and openly.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a...
But they don't break that down by revenue stream in a way that would be useful. This is by design: Apple doesn't want people sniffing around and wondering what things would be like in a world where Apple had to sell their technology piecemeal. It'd be like demanding to know how much profit Apple made from selling macOS vs. Macintosh computers. Everything's one giant bundle, why calculate things separately? Are you trying to force us to unbundle shit?
Because they already are calculating all those things, just not disclosing them?
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a...
• Apple makes 100% of its profit from the App Store.
• This profit comes equally from the US, EU, China, and the entire rest of the world. (It doesn't, the EU is a smaller market.)
• Half of EU users would stop using the App Store entirely if they were allowed to side-load.
• Apple's keeps 75% of its revenue as profit.
By my calculations, this would mean Apple's EU App Store monopoly is worth 9.375% of the company's worldwide revenue. Please let me know if I made an error in my math.
Why is Apple willing to risk 10% of its worldwide revenue to protect 9.375% of its worldwide revenue?
Okay, I guess maybe Apple thinks it's unlikely to be fined the maximum amount, and is willing to roll the dice. But I also chose ludicrously favorable numbers here.
Example: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tech-and-telecom-law/californi...
This can be a positive effect for the world overall, but it is also annoying that some EU politicians describe that as (and confuse it with) "innovation".
As a European citizen, I approve of things like killing of cellphone roaming fees and forcing adapter uniformity (I wish they also enforced power plug uniformity across the EU's 27 member states).
Anti-trust law probably needs to be updated to take platforms into account. In the past (pre-software), the first sale doctrine provided a decent check valve on this sort of crap.
It was the idea that, if you sold a thing to a person, then you no longer owned it. I think the "first-" part of the name is there because anti-resale provisions were commonly tacked onto an agreement between the manufacturer and initial purchaser.
For instance, a tractor manufacturer would put a trademarked logo on a copyrighted picture on the side of a patented gear box, and then, as part of the condition of the sale to the farmer, they'd say the trademark, copyright and patent licenses were non-transferrable.
The courts correctly ruled that this was bullshit, and banned it. We need to go back to something like that. Then (since the DMCA would be ruled unenforceable, and things like the CFAA would apply to device manufacturers), you'd be able to modify your phone, and the manufacturer would not be allowed to retaliate.
At that point, Google and Apple's duopoly would give them a lot less market power. For one thing, once Google "sold" android to phone manufacturers, they couldn't use contracts to prevent the manufacturers from making a mozilla phone, etc, like they do today. Similarly, iPhone parts couldn't contain mechanisms preventing their use in other devices, because hardware DRM would not only be unprotected by the DMCA, but flat-out illegal.
Then when it comes time for implementation, they make an implementation that isn't exactly 100% in accordance with the regulation and wait to be taken to court. Then they get to argue with a judge related to what is and isn't in accordance with the regulation. If they get lucky, the judge will rule partly to them, which gives them less strict regulation.
The EU lawmakers can then re-vamp the law to make it stricter, and the process continues again.
The EU might not be worth 10% of annual turnover.
If Apple pulls out of the EU, they will definitely lose that EU app store revenue, and will additionally lose all EU hardware revenue.
"Apple tells suppliers to use 'Taiwan, China' or 'Chinese Taipei' to appease Beijing" https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/05/apple_warns_suppliers...
"The problem with canceling Jon Stewart: Apple bowed to Chinese government censorship" https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2023/10/26/jon...
"Apple pulls Taiwanese flag emoji from iPhones in Hong Kong" https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-10-08/apple-taiw...
Even Google didn't went that far and withdrew from China.
"In early 2010, Google shut down its Chinese website altogether after failing to reach an agreement with Beijing over how much content to censor in search results." https://observer.com/2022/10/alphabet-shut-google-translate-...
In the long term they’ll be forced to give up all the commercial surpluses to local mega apps by the government, and the political/ethical problems require no elaboration.
Edit: Flagged on what grounds ?? This isn't harmful speech. You're suppressing valid criticism of Apple's monopoly power. This is not the way. It's only going to make me spend more time surfacing these issues to policy makers.
It's time for a Mobile Bill of Rights.
Two companies cannot dictate that the entire world jump through their hoops wearing their straight jackets on the most important device and technology category of the century.
We need free web-first downloads with zero scare walls and zero restrictions. These must be mandated across the board. No limitations on JIT, technology choices, deploy cadence, functionality, etc.
Apple is camping on the entire information economy.
FWIW I largely agree with you; a duopoly is only one more choice than a monopoly, and both Google and Apple have done a variety of things that annoy me. If I could pick a third option I would, but it's essentially impossible to enter the market at this point.
Anti-competitive law continually lags behind accelerating cycles of tech ecosystem centralization, while the scale and number of these ecosystems goes up, and the number of significant competitors in each goes down.
The "open internet" is now a myriad of visible and invisible gates, walls, dossiers, coordinated action, coercive frictions, manipulative "services", and taxes scaling on our productivity (instead of proportional to value provided to us), raised by fewer and fewer owners operating across more and more dimensions of our lives.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
"Article 13: Anti-circumvention
4. The gatekeeper shall not engage in any behaviour that undermines effective compliance with the obligations of Articles 5, 6 and 7 regardless of whether that behaviour is of a contractual, commercial or technical nature, or of any other nature, or consists in the use of behavioural techniques or interface design.
7. Where the gatekeeper circumvents or attempts to circumvent any of the obligations in Article 5, 6, or 7 in a manner described in paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 of this Article, the Commission may open proceedings pursuant to Article 20 and adopt an implementing act referred to in Article 8(2) in order to specify the measures that the gatekeeper is to implement."