That linked topic says Apple is working with the developer to handle it. I don't see any evidence of favoritism.

Fastmail clearly reached out to Apple eons ago, which is evidence of skill on fastmail's part and not favortism on Apple's part. Admittedly, fastmail very likely has lots of contacts in Apple (Jeremy Howard isn't nobody), but that's also a skill issue.

Of the many email hosts out there, only a handful receiving special treatment with no route for others to even request the same is special treatment. In the case of Fastmail, they’ve had this access since 2015.

It’s also very interesting that Apple reached out to the user in the developer forum thread after they raised it as an EU DMA issue.

Why can't MXroute do exactly the same thing? Did they open a ticket?

No, I went straight to trying to shame them on Twitter. The part where I said "We’ve tried to talk. @Apple just stops responding once they realize what we’re asking" was just a joke, you got me.

Having friends inside of Apple that provide you with something no one else can obtain is a fairly decent definition of favoritism.

You cannot send Push notifications to the stock iOS Mail app no matter how hard you try. They can. There are functions inside of iOS that are made better because of this (auto copied 2FA codes, for example).

There's no evidence "nobody else can obtain" it. The parent's link to the Apple developer forum shows somebody else obtaining it. There's no evidence that MXroute couldn't do the same.

MXroute doesn't go around threatening US companies with EU law from Texas. As for your requirement for evidence, this situation does not require your approval unless you work for Apple and can offer some help in the matter. The tweet you are critiquing is me (owner of MXroute) attempting to gain Apple's attention to get what Fastmail and that EU user have obtained. I'll continue doing what I'm doing, if that's alright with you.

Why would you expect a defined process? It's proprietary software on a closed platform.

I'll just take your word for it that there's no ways for Texans to get the same treatment as these other companies. Oh well. Take it up with your legislature, I guess.

This is a pretty unfortunate context for this, but I just wanted to say that I've been using your service for years, and me and my handful of customers are 100% satisfied.

It sucks that Apple won't just embrace interop with host mail services in some formal way, I'm not sure what the benefit of this specific flavor of gatekeeping achieves. It also sucks that HN contrarians are reflexively dumping on this, instead of supporting entrepreneurs like one might hope in such a community. Anyway, keep up the great work, I'm with you long term.