You mean they wanted there to be no confusion whatsoever that they wouldn't allow competition in their ecosystem.

The exemption requested was temporary.

The 18 months was to entrench themselves in favor of other players.

EU response said it was "for a minimum of 18 months" — does not sound temporary to me.

How is that not temporary? "Ok, you asked for an exemption for a minimum of 18 months, we're granting you what you asked for, an 18 month exemption".

By now, Apple has accrued years of malicious DMA/DSA compliance. After those 18 months they'll try to find another reason not to allow competition.

Besides that, the law is the law and the DMA/DSA has been around for years. Why should they get an exception is one part of a duopoly?

That's even worse, then. They are not responsible for other companies' products. So this is just another piece of anti-DMA propaganda then. They have been fighting it loudly and with toddler-level arguments since they became subject to it.

A huge part of Apple’s marketing, whether you believe them or not, is that they try to protect your privacy.

The smartphone is probably the most sensitive device most people own. It knows your location always. It has your banking apps. Your password manager. Your instant messages, and social media chats, it knows whether you’re walking, or driving, or talking on the phone, and to whom.

Once Apple allows any other vendor to vacuum all of that intensively private information out of an iPhone, Apple becomes indirectly responsible for potentially massive privacy breaches.

All of that happens only if the user chooses to do it though. Anybody is free to stay in the caged Apple garden. The EU just wants them to leave the door unlocked.

A door with a lock is different from a wall with no door. Same argument that gets made with government-keyed or government-breakable encryption schemes: it's better for everyone to not have the backdoor at all.

It's not a backdoor. It's a front door that can only be opened from the inside when done correctly.

That's flatly not true. imessage interop means not just the person who installs the other app, but the data of everyone with whom they message loses the security/privacy guarantees created by imessage and Apple as a corp. Including massive resources pointed at securing the app itself.

That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea from a competition point of view, but good ideas can be discussed w/ an honest view of the quite real downsides.

Apple could have worked with other companies to make RCS secure by default instead of building their own little thing that openly and intentionally discriminates non-members of their club.

Deliberate bad faith is about right.

Apple was not the problem for rcs; the carriers are and were.

> They are not responsible for other companies' products.

Legally, maybe not, practically it becomes their problem.