And adds substantially to the cost of compliance; one suspects. Dealing with a regulator is not a cheap process; there are a lot of lawyers involved.

I’m sure not only does Apple have a host of lawyers working on understanding this specific regulation but they have gone through the process of developing rigorous estimates of the costs and benefits of compliance vs litigation. Given the size of Apple’s market and the potential for other countries to follow suit with their own regulations pending these cases, they have likely deemed compliance to be extremely costly to their business. In that case, their potential budget for fighting this may be enormous.

Oh yeah, it was an aside. I'm not worried about the world-leading US and Asian incumbents. Expensive regulations help incumbents. I'm more worried about the local EU companies that play in this market. Or I would be, something mysterious (sotto voce probably regulatory expenses) put them out of business.

That's the thing about the DMA. These provisions only apply if you hit a certain extreme market presence. These regulations do not apply to those small companies.

That's a very U.S. centric perspective. It's somewhat less in the EU than in the U.S. to involve courts so readily.

Apple is a very U.S. centric company so it makes sense they’re going to do things this way.

It actually doesn't, they are operating in Europe so they have to do things that way.

Then why aren't they?

They soon will

It's a common law perspective really (writing from the UK) - laws are interpreted by judges and that forms a body of past cases which 'fill in the gaps' so to speak, and become the rule for the future. In contrast to civil law in much of Europe which attempts to codify everything, leaving nothing to interpretation. (I'm no expert - I don't know what happens when they come across a gap, the proceedings are suspended until legislators full it in I suppose?)

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.

Or, sue-happy individuals without common law, such as in Latin America.

> I'm no expert - I don't know what happens when they come across a gap, the proceedings are suspended until legislators full it in I suppose?

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.

The difference is that precedent can guide a judge's decision, it doesn't force it.

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.

> That's a very U.S. centric perspective. It's somewhat less common in the EU than in the U.S. to involve courts so readily.

For people, yes. For businesses, absolutely not.

Eh. I think "break the rules and see what happens" has been a _very_ common means of GDPR 'compliance' in Europe, in general. Worked, too, at least for a while; the first fines >100million only showed up in 2022 or so.

Yup.

In the U.S. maybe.

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.