Apple vs the Law
360 comments
·July 11, 2025simonask
FinnLobsien
I would argue the opposite: It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply.
Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead.
Y-bar
The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB-C law" and similar ones) that make it easier for consumers to avoid vendor lock-in.
> just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead
Temu is under active investigation for breaching these laws, anyone operating within EU is subject to those laws, not just European companies (e.g. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-ope...)
FinnLobsien
> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB-C law" and similar ones) that make it easier for consumers to avoid vendor lock-in.
Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers. The problem is that you pass DMA, DSA, GDPR, etc. which Google, Apple etc. can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it.
Instead what's happening is that European alternatives (the kind that's actually good, not the kind that's European and half as good) don't exist and the incentives to build one shrink because any scaling company is instantly hamstrung.
isodev
> regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply
This is a very inaccurate view. I’ve worked with multiple SMEs and no such “complexities” ever become operational challenges. Even as a indie developer, my compliance is a default provided I’m not trying to do something shady.
Looking into the EU regulations, in most cases what they want you to do (or not do) is common sense.
Loic
Same experience, from startup to large multinational EU companies.
The biggest headaches/issues are normally local regulations (country specific or even more local). The EU directives are more frameworks with a lot of flexibility and well grounded on common sense + expertise. How the different countries implement them in their own laws (with their own historical laws) is a different story.
const_cast
Right, and the entire point of the EU is to reduce regulatory overhead by extracting regulations to a bigger governing body.
The US has 50 sets of regulations and I don't hear anyone complaining. Although they should - you're almost certainly controlled by California law because, surprise surprise, complying with 50 sets of regulations is hard.
bjelkeman-again
In IT it may be the case. In foodtech it is a problem. This may sound reassuring, as we don’t really want much of the stuff being sold in the US here in the EU. But, for new approaches regarding food production the EU regulatory environment is unfortunately a morass. There are lots of regulation which is neither fact or experience based, for example around insects, or ecological labelling.
null
drexlspivey
This indie dev begs to differ https://x.com/levelsio/status/1833126426142179653
aerzen
DMA is applicable only to "gatekeepers" who markets with X amount of users. This is designed not to burden smaller businesses, but to limit monopoly of the large few corporations.
davedx
> It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply.
The DMA (that this article is about) applies to gatekeepers (massive companies like big tech), not mom and pop startups
klabb3
It doesn’t even apply to megacorps generally. The DMA applies to Core Platform Services – meaning app stores, browsers, etc – that are evaluated as gatekeepers individually.
The same company can have provide CPSs, with different status. For instance, Google is a designated gatekeeper of Android (OS) and Google Maps (Intermediation), but not Gmail. So the DMA won’t dictate anything related to Gmail, even if Google is a gatekeeper in other areas.
zarzavat
That is the western European way though. It's supposed to be a nice place to live, not a nice place to do business. If that leads to Chaebolification of the economy then so be it. There are other parts of the world that specialise in deregulation at the expense of living standards.
FinnLobsien
True! And I generally empathize with this. The core point of the EU and its member states' governments should be to enable high quality of life.
But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc.
The problem is that Europe is like an old, rich person who now lives off of the principal of their wealth. For a person that's fine because they'll eventually die. For a government, you should strive for an environment that lets you keep growing wealth.
rickdeckard
I'd argue that actions like the DMA regulation are actively working against "Chaebolification" though.
It's not national law that can be bent locally, it's EU law that applies to all companies of certain size.
I think the EU learned the hard way that they can't rely on its members to prioritize common interests
(see Ireland vs. Apple tax avoidance, Germany vs. Car evolution, Austria vs. Reduction of Russian influence, Hungary vs. everything)
surgical_fire
Massive companies typically smother small players anyway, especially in unregulated environments.
> Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead.
Does this actually happen or are you just making shit up?
Is Temu exempt of any packaging requirements?
dotandgtfo
> I would argue the opposite: It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply.
Are you arguing that 27 different sets of laws was a better approach? That these countries would just gladly lie down and never regulate the societal-level harms, systemic lawbreaking, and massive infringement of privacy across the board? I don't think so.
For a moment the political system in the US seemed to get to the same conclusions as the EU under Bidens FTC and anti-trust cases. But the conclusions of that remain to be seen.
FinnLobsien
The problem is that those 27 sets of laws basically still exist. Regulation is certainly not the only reason. Fragmentation is another massive problem.
There's the EU-Inc initiative that the EU has basically made pointless (by wanting to introduce 27 new standards, not one, just making things more complex).
Note that I'm not arguing for zero regulation.
exe34
> continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex
To be fair, the regulations are there because companies are out-of-control paperclip maximisers. For example, the cookie banner didn't have to be obnoxious - companies choose to comply maliciously to adhere to the text and shit over the spirit of the regulations, which have to become more and more verbose and explicit.
vegabook
I wish people would stop comparing a stock (market cap) with a flow (GDP).
andruby
Can you also expand on why? Especially in this case I do feel like it’s an (imperfect) proxy for power they wield.
Andrew_nenakhov
The same reason you don't compare speed with distance. Distance is meters, speed is distance per the unit of time, meters / seconds, m/s.
Likewise, market cap is measured in monetary units, dollars, euros, etc., while GDP is measured in money per the unit of time: $XXXX / year.
RReverser
Because one is annual, and the other is just total. The equivalent of GDP for corporations would be annual revenue.
tobias3
I'd argue that it doesn't go far enough at this point. There are imaginable scenarios now where the US uses AWS/Microsoft like China currently uses rare earth exports or even further and AWS/Microsoft + Android/iOS are critical infrastructure. Having some "sovereign cloud" etc. won't help since this needs continuous monitoring and improvements from the mothership.
Merely doing monopoly regulation won't help. We have to actually destroy the monopolies.
planb
As a former European, I agree with your first statement. I love that the EU is taking this seriously, and I like how they introduced the "gatekeeper" term to apply regulations only to the "big ones" and not small businesses (even though I don't agree with many of the individual laws in the DMA).
That said, you can't argue that this isn't protectionist - we simply don't have any gatekeepers here, so if we're fair the DMA is only hitting international competitors (except Spotify maybe?)
Y-bar
European companies I could find which the European Commission has taken action against with the Digital Services Act:
Zalando has three enforcement actions against them since June 2023
Booking.com has one
Technius (mainly streaming) has two
WebGroup CZ (Adult entertainment) has five
planb
Wow, I did not know that, thanks for making me aware of this. I guess the tech press only covers the big cases? I didn't even know there were so many cases already.
edit: I looked it up - you are talking about the DSA (digital services act) while I was talking about the DMA (the one including the gatekeeper specification) - so that's not really what I meant....
jeroenhd
> we simply don't have any gatekeepers here
Booking would love that to be the case. And last I heard, Zalando is currently fighting the EU over having to comply with the DMA.
planb
No, this is under the DSA (digital services act), not the DMA.
The DSA tells platforms how they must keep users safe and transparent, the DMA tells the largest gatekeepers how they must behave toward competitors and business users.
giingyui
Europe is centre right? That is an interesting claim. I guess someone’s right is someone else’s left.
xandrius
Where would you place it? I'm curious because centre-right is quite spot on.
giingyui
Socially and economically left wing. Progressive socially and interventionist economically.
pimeys
Quite right, yeah. See the map:
https://www.foiaresearch.net/sites/default/files/styles/body...
I would consider ALDE center-right still, and S&D the first left coalition.
simgt
Center right is spot on if you know anything about the EU's member states. Here left means some flavour of socialism. Running state monopolies to the ground and adding markets for essential services like electricity is not exactly that.
piva00
Yes, the EU as an institution is centre-right, its main purpose is to regulate a common market, it's a economic liberal institution, and liberal in this sense is a right-wing political philosophy, not the bastardised "liberal" usage in American politics meaning "progressive".
EMIRELADERO
The greatest gem is found in the footnote, IMO
> "They managed to convince the courts that iPadOS is a separate operating system to iOS (it's not), which delayed iPadOS being designated as a gatekeeper for almost a year. They are currently challenging all of the rest: the iOS, Safari, and App Store designations, and successfully managed to avoid iMessage being designated at all. They have taken the DMA law to court for an apparently ambiguous comma in article 5(4) - the payment one, and for somehow infringing on human rights law in article 6(7) - the interoperability one."
Looking at the actual filing[1], Apple says:
> "First plea in law, alleging that Article 6(7) of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 is inconsistent with the requirements of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and the principle of proportionality, and that Article 2(b) of the European Commission Decision of 5 September 2023 is unlawful insofar as it imposes the obligations under Article 6(7) of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 on Apple in relation to iOS."
For context, here are the full contents of Article 6(7):
"The gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such services."
[1] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsession...
Cthulhu_
Big companies like that have a vested interest in paying their legal team A Lot Of Money to find stupid details like this and to argue the toss over them because a ruling can cost them billions. If arguing over a comma means they don't have to, or that it pushes the point where they have to pay forwards, it's worth the expense to them.
amelius
It also costs them my trust, though.
Zopieux
This happens in the confines of legal (EU, California, ...) institutions and courts with the occasional boring news reporting the average consumer doesn't read, like this article.
It's clearly a win for Apple.
fsflover
If earlier actions of Apple didn't affect anything [0,1], then I doubt this one will. What's the alternative? Android [2]?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
bloppe
And yet odds are you continue to spend increasingly large sums on Apple products every year
jb1991
I am certainly not surprised that Apple is employing a lot of legal tricky to work around judgments. But what does surprise me is that there’s a very common attitude in forums that somehow Apple is the only company doing this, or they’re doing it worse than any other company.
vladms
For me personally they seem to be more expensive than competitors and have a more aggressive stance on openness (ex: compare PWA support on Android vs iOS, not to mention the multiple other things like no multiple stores, the browser engine discussion, etc). So, I am not amazed that people think "on top of all the other things that you annoy us with you also try to avoid the law?!".
jeroenhd
While I hate Apple's anti-consumer practices as much as anyone, the PWA platform is a system set up by Google first and foremost. Take-up has been limited outside of Google Chrome. I wouldn't say Apple's PWA approach is necessarily an example of Apple's fuckery.
This wouldn't be much of an issue, of course, if Chrome would just run on iOS like it does on any other OS, so Google can implement PWAs themselves.
carlosjobim
Openness is not a concern for the people who buy Apple devices, and probably not for the public at large. It certainly is no concern to me, I need a machine which works so I can get stuff done. For a MacBook that means opening the lid. For a Windows laptop that means plugging it in, opening the lid, waiting for half an hour for the system to update while it is unusable and hogging all the bandwidth at this time, etc.
Smart phones took over from personal computers, because people want something which works and they hate having to fiddle with their device, trouble shoot and fix things. They don't care that they can't install an Arch Linux terminal on it or download torrents. And if they need something more pro, they go for an iPad or a Macbook when they can choose. Openness is only important for programmers and people who love to mess with their device, not for the public at large.
gpm
I can install apps that Google doesn't approve, and app stores other than Google's on my pixel.
I can get root access to my pixel.
I can replace the operating with an open source fork on my pixel.
Google is not using its monopoly on the hardware to get a monopoly on the software - they're competing on software primarily on its own merits and the convenience of being the default.
No other phone company that I know of even develops their own operating system.
Apple really is unique in their attempt to control the software that runs on the mass market general purpose computing devices that they sell.
rickdeckard
> But what does surprise me is that there’s a very common attitude in forums that somehow Apple is the only company doing this, or they’re doing it worse than any other company.
Apart from being irrelevant and whataboutism, this is the narrative Apple is playing, particularly towards its userbase.
The EU regulation doesn't focus on Apple in any way, the purpose of the DMA is to have objective criteria to identify a scaled market of digital goods with an uneven playing field for all players.
The EU DMA has identified that Apple created a closed market of significant size, made themselves the gatekeeper and invited companies to compete there. But Apple participates in the market also as a player, and skews the playing field in their favor.
So it's an unjust market where forces are unable to flow freely, and the EU is attempting to rectify that.
The reasons why Apple is in such public focus on this are #1 because they operate an unusual amount of closed markets and #2 because they WANT this: it is part of Apple's strategy to rally publicly against the regulation and shape a different perception of it.
ashdksnndck
I wouldn’t argue that Apple is worse than any other company. They’re just the tip of the spear in the fight against EU competition regulation. Other companies would fight just as hard if they had as much to lose by following the rules.
LoganDark
> But what does surprise me is that there’s a very common attitude in forums that somehow Apple is the only company doing this, or they’re doing it worse than any other company.
Apple creates vertically integrated devices. For many people, Apple dictates their entire digital life - far more so than any megacorporation on the mere level of, say Google, could ever hope to, considering Apple owns the hardware, software, and everything in between. So they are in a position shared by no other company - they are entirely unique in this. You cannot buy a device with entirely Google-designed hardware and software - Pixels with Android come close, Chromebooks come close, but nothing reaches Apple, even without custom silicon. I would say the closest company that exists in terms of vertical integration is Oxide Computer, but those aren't consumer devices.
So it's not that Apple is the only company doing this. It's also not that they're "doing it worse than any other company". It's that when they do this it affects people on a level not shared by any other company. It has a much larger impact than anybody else ever could.
For the record, I don't mind Apple's vertical integration, in fact that's one of their main selling points for me. It just gives them the greatest possible leverage to implement these sorts of practices.
culturestate
> You cannot buy a device with entirely Google-designed hardware and software - Pixels with Android come close
I don’t really understand this distinction. How is eg a Pixel 9 Pro running Android with GMS on a Tensor any less entirely Google-designed than an iPhone 16 is entirely Apple-designed?
resource_waste
Apple is a very stylish kind of company. Their public perception matters more because when you use an Apple product, it creates an image of you.
If I buy a Google phone, no one is going to comment on it. If I buy an Apple, or a Tesla, or luxury vehicle, people are going to comment on it.
If Apple is known to be scummy and you buy it, it makes you look bad. I think we are seeing that with Tesla now, I doubt too many liberals are buying a cybertruck.
spogbiper
maybe true in some parts of the world. where i live, literally 50% of phones are apple phones. they are commonplace. nobody comments on them.
mijoharas
Can someone explain what apple is arguing here?
_How_ do they claim that this section is inconsistent with the European Charter of Fundamental rights?
Y_Y
Glad to see Apple standing up for human rights in Europe.
Maybe they are just different-thinking, artistic, humanist underdogs after all.
neuroelectron
I basically stopped buying "apps" almost a decade ago when Apple unceremoniously removed an app i paid for with no refund because the in app browser defaulted to a certain website. Btw I have always hated their "app" branding. But the benefit of it, at least for me, is it's a strong reminder that it's a childish analog to an application.
The only exception to this is I bought the game, Vampire Survivors, no wait. It was free. (because of clones in the app store) Anyway.
The funny thing is I do actually have like 100 (free) apps installed. I just never use any of them except for Brave. I basically immediately forget about them the second I install them because just using them is so awkward. They know they have a usability problem but they can't really square it with their massive app ecosystem except in the most slowest, methodical way possible. In the meantime, more UI annoyances are popping up twice as fast.
iPhone used to compete well a decade ago in usability for things like copying text from a webpage into an email. Despite the phone being much larger, I find it much more difficult to do today, perhaps because selecting text is just so unpredictable with the way web standards have become a pile of cruft. Despite whose fault it is, ultimately it's much worse now. I would only bother trying that on a desktop today unless absolutely necessary.
Sometimes text just becomes impossible to edit in certain circumstances. There's like three different things that can happen on a tap and hold and none of them are consistent. It feels absolutely random which one it does. I used to be able to select text from images, now I have to go through two to three cycles of "hold tap menu" -> "select text from image" until it works. It actually still works fine on my old iPad. How is the regression this bad?
mathstuf
I also find editing on an iPhone to be an exercise in futility. Is it no longer possible to place a cursor in the middle of a word? I end up having to go to a word boundary and erase from there and retype everything.
The keyboard touch areas also seem offset from Android and I end up one row off too much of the time.
neuroelectron
Yes, the UI is so overloaded you can never tell what it's going to do. It might do two or three totally different things. Obviously you want to have the magnifying glass with a cursor. But then the cursor might just decide to jump to the end of the word. Sometimes it's impossible to get the cursor in front of the first letter if the UI is cramped. Maybe it will copy the text into a floating clipboard if your finger drifts a few pixels south. Maybe it will bring up a context menu? If you're using Safari, maybe it won't even let you select any text at all. Then you can take a screenshot and select text from an image to work around that.
woah
I do more writing on my iPhone (it's the one with the largest screen) than I do on a computer. I can do about 40wpm. To move the cursor you just hold down on the space bar. These complaints kind of sound like someone from the 90's saying that the close window button is on the wrong side
neuroelectron
40wpm is 33% less than what a bad typist can do. Repeating "just hold down the space bar" doesn't make it behave any less erratically. We had Palm Pilots in the 90s and they ran on AAA batteries and editing text on them was certainly more consistent than the current state of iOS.
eviks
> just hold down on the space bar
It's not "just", because you have to switch from the more natural "tap where you want to edit" to a separate gesture, which also takes longer and is less precise. You might also use a different keyboard with better layout/symbol visibility that doesn't support this gesture
sorrythanks
if you hold down the space bar you can use that to slide the cursor around :)
neuroelectron
Yes but sometimes it doesn't work, weirdly. The cursor just doesn't go where you put it, jumping to the end of the line or next line entirely, where it gets lost in limbo because it's a single line text box. It's ridiculously broken sometimes.
Now that's not a big deal until it happens 3 times in a row randomly and now something that would take less than half a second on a keyboard is taking over 20 seconds. Not only that the random behavior is extremely frustrating which just makes you avoid it in the future.
gausswho
Thank you, I had no idea. When did this feature land?
mathstuf
I use that on Android all the time. But I feel I've only gotten it to work once or twice on iPhone. And even then the word boundaries were very "sticky" (IIRC) and precision placement still very difficult.
isodev
As a developer for apple platforms, it's extremely difficult to keep a positive mindset to all this. Year after year, Apple finds ways to continue unbounded fuckery. Making apps for iPhones is not that profitable anymore either, at this point is more about addressing a painful necessity - Apple is the phone company and you have to make it work if you want access to that "unmovable" infrastructure.
amelius
I'm seriously at a loss about why people would support this increasingly developer-hostile ecosystem and essentially work towards their own demise and perhaps even the rest of their profession. I'd suggest switching to a different source of income while you still can, even if only out of self-respect.
grishka
Because as a developer, you often don't get that choice, for example, if your product is an online service. Either you have an iOS app and play by Apple's stupid rules, or you don't, and your iPhone users go to a competitor that does have an iOS app, or at the very least complain quite loudly.
null
thaumasiotes
If your product is an online service, having a website seems like a slam dunk.
frollogaston
I used to be an iPhone app dev before I ragequit around 2017. Took that skill off my resumé, got a new SWE job that paid more anyway. Besides Apple's rules, it wasn't enjoyable to develop for that platform. Everyone was constantly fighting the tooling.
The worst time ever was Swift 1.0 + Core Data, two broken things combined, that was like Dark Castle on CD-i.
bzzzt
Because most people are not developers? Between ad-infested Google, enshittified Microsoft and still not ready for the desktop Linux the Apple ecosystem might be the most accessible and easy to use platform for most non-technical users. As a developer it's an annoyance but I have to admire the elegance in the way Apple uses their core software and hardware technologies over their entire stack. As a user I don't care about what developers feel about it. Apple's market share is big enough to draw lots of them.
frollogaston
I think the question was, why do devs support this ecosystem
fsflover
> still not ready for the desktop Linux
This has been a myth for the last decade. I'm even using GNU/Linux on my smartphone, which is arguably not ready for the average consumer but can be good enough for the HN audience.
pmontra
All iOS and Android developers I know don't write app that they sell themselves. They work for customers that more often than not give away their apps for free because they make money from the service the app gives access to. And they don't sell the service on the app store.
Think about banks, insurance companies, TV broadcasters, train timetables and services, cars management, etc.
strogonoff
Making quality software is usually a business, and if you distribute it in walled gardens even more so. That said, I have a number of iOS apps installed that I know are developed and sold by specific individuals or small businesses: myNoise, NetNewsWire, The Iconfactory (Bitcam, Tapestry), Sun Seeker, Rarevision VHS are some examples. I am sure there are plenty more, but there are reasons someone would not want to publish an app under own name—same as why you would create an LLC: liability, not having people stalk you personally if they did not like what you make (especially true if you distribute it for free or for a very low price), appearing more professional, etc.
I believe iOS App Store has been groundbreaking specifically in how it allowed a solo developer to start distributing work to millions of people across the entire globe with very little friction, taking care of things that are not just boring but actually not in reach of an individual—pricing in different currencies, accounting under different legal and tax systems, zero friction installation, discovery (at least before it, thanks to the aforementioned qualities, became ultra competitive and overwhelmed by businesses who outsource development and/or by less than scrupulous people wanting to earn a quick dollar), etc.—and just getting you paid. If there was a comparable precursor that I am not aware of, I would be keen to know.
SSLy
> If there was a comparable precursor that I am not aware of, I would be keen to know.
Play Store Apps is contemporary to App Store, no?
grishka
> "...unfortunately, it's impossible to do all the complex engineering to comply with the Commission's current interpretation of the DMA..."
There's nothing complex and impossible about removing some "if" statements responsible for code signature enforcement.
jeroenhd
That sounds way too hard to accomplish. Remember, Apple is a company with limited means, only bringing in the GDP of a small country. There's no way they can afford to pay programmers to check all of those if-statements! Those kinds of complex operations are only possible if a third party app manages to interact with iMessage's servers, or if someone figures out a way to replace a screen on their phone without Apple's express permission.
thaumasiotes
> Apple is a company with limited means, only bringing in the GDP of a small country
For reference, in 2023, Apple produced a little less than Romania or Hong Kong, and a little more than Egypt or the Czech Republic.
Hong Kong is small (though not a lot smaller than the Czech Republic); Egypt is big.
--- edit ---
I accidentally compared Apple's revenue in 2023 to the IMF forecast of GDP for 2025. For 2023: Apple produced very slightly more than Hong Kong or Nigeria, and a little less than Malaysia or Iran.
Nigeria is even bigger than Egypt. It still produced less than Hong Kong.
horsawlarway
Ah, yes - tiny numbers like "Slightly less than the total GDP produced by 91 million people in Iran" or "Slightly more than the 6th most productive metro of the most populous country on the planet".
I agree - such a small player like checks notes "the 3rd most valuable company in the history of humanity" has no chance at implementing these troublesome rules.
nolok
I agree that Apple's answer is of very little value and realism but I disagree on two count;
One of surface, it's a lot LOT more work than that, the very obvious is "it's probably not if, but assumptions made everywhere, so it's not remove a condition but add a lot of check and rethink the whole process to ensure it's still consistent and safe";
Two, that's not what the issue is. It doesn't matter if it takes a lot of work or not. Nobody would accept something like "unfortunately, it's impossible to do all the complex engineering to comply with the YourCarCannotHaveA50PercentChanceOfExplodingWhenStarted regulation", which is an exagerated exemple on purpose; whether it's hard or not has nothing to do with anything being discussed, it's only a PR cop out.
tomashubelbauer
If they stand behind that statement, surely they are ready to stop doing business in the EU then? I don't see how they could continue given they are unable to follow the law here? And if it by some miracle turns out to be possible in a month or two, what consequences will Apple face for lying about this?
mattlondon
I suspect it goes a lot deeper than just a single if-statement somewhere, and hundreds of thousands of lines of code and various interfaces and all the rest are built on the core assumption of the signatures being there and the packages etc being signed.
These sort of things can be tricky to refactor and more complex than they first seem. For example I recently spent the past 12 weeks or so just moving some fields around on a CRUD app (not adding or removing - just changing their order!) because there were assumptions built on assumptions built on assumptions about what order things are in and what comes first and what has already been done or not and so on. What ostensibly seemed trivial, actually required almost a complete rewrite of whole parts of the CRUD app to overcome the assumptions and implied behavior of what happens when and how.
grishka
They share a lot of "AMFI" infrastructure between iOS and macOS, with macOS having a much more permissive security model (you can run self-signed code) while still retaining "private" entitlements for sensitive private APIs, only available to Apple-signed apps. Unless you disable SIP, then you can just do whatever.
(Disclaimer: I may be wrong, I haven't done much of my own research, it's just things I read in various articles over the years)
ethan_smith
While signature verification could be disabled with a few code changes, the real challenge is maintaining security boundaries when opening up previously controlled interfaces - it requires rebuilding permission models, API stability guarantees, and sandboxing mechanisms that were designed with closed-system assumptions.
snitty
I honestly didn't expect the "it's just one line of code" argument on Hacker News.
camillomiller
I am generally positive towards Apple, but this is the most outrageous point to maintain. You made the iPhone, the Apple Watch, and the VisionPro. You create chipsets that smoke any other competitor. But sure, you can't fix some software processes because the engineering of that is too hard!
grishka
It turns out it's very easy to not know things when your salary depends on you not knowing them.
ankit219
When a rule is vaguely defined, deliberately so that a regulator can take different interpretations depending on whether they are having any effect and who is doing it, even trivial things become complex. Eg: Meta is asked to withdraw monthly subscription for no ads offer when EU GDPR courts approved it, all EU publishers offer the same service, but the DMA interpretation of regulators for Meta keep saying No.
On the surface, it's easy to do. But that is also based on the assumptions where they had to maintain some first party apis vs now having to create and maintain them so that third parties could use it. If they are committed to security which apparently DSA mandates, they have to devote many resources on it to ensure there are no threat vectors. Plus, there is no set guidelines on how much the APIs need to offer, it will be another session where competition asks for more and they will be asked to do that too.
LelouBil
I didn't follow the case with Meta, but isn't it different ? Because you talk about both the GDPR and DMA, which are different regulations.
I agree that a lot of websites (mostly news websites) have the "ad tracking or subscription" model, and I'm not sure if there has been a clear ruling in it yet, but maybe the DMA makes this stricter for Meta since it is a Gatekeeper
ankit219
Meta offered Pay-or-consent model (nov 23) at 10 euros or so to placate the then GDPR regulators, as the court found contractual necessity as an invalid argument. CJEU stance seems like its valid for meta and they had a long opinion on that.
But DMA regulators dont agree calling it a false choice and asking meta to monetize by non personalized ads. The thing as you mentioned is how other publishers have the same model, which was never objected by any authority under GDPR either (so they clearly seem to think the model is valid). Its obviously a sticky situation where rules are different for different companies in the same jurisdiction when they are offering the same thing.
A counter could be whether if Meta isn't allowed, would no one else be allowed, but you already know the answer to that question.
saubeidl
That is exactly why the EU offers consultation workshops like the one mentioned in the article - so that companies can discuss this sort of thing and figure out a way that is workable for both them and the legislator.
It's unfortunate that Apple thinks of these as opportunities to lecture them on their own laws instead and unsurprising that approach doesn't work.
ankit219
Consultation workshops should not be needed. The rule should be clear enough that there is a clear interpretation for everyone. If you need these kind of consultations, you already signal it will be a moving target. Why not just publish clearly what they want Apple to do. In any case, if this was about reaching what works for both regulator and Apple, don't you think these would have happened before DMA went into effect. The timelines are that DMA went into effect in 2023, the first changes in March 2024, and then first set of workshops last year, and second set this year. Is this a novel way to first do the changes and only then discuss them?
I understand a situation where what they want is literally impossible via tech, but then if EU is already talking to others in the space, they would have the same understanding. Otherwise, why keep the regulations vague?
Based on various accounts it does not seem these workshops are looking at arriving at a consensus either. Morever, it seems Apple did consult with EU regulators while rolling out their changes.
saagarjha
I attended the workshop remotely (one of my questions is in the recording, if you watched it) and IMO it was mostly a waste of time. I didn't even stick around past the App Store section. Partly because it was daytime CEST but mostly because the format was awful. Apple would spend half the time talking about how the EU was forcing them to make their OS worse and then the EC thought it was a good idea to make Q&A a batched thing so Apple could just talk for five minutes about none of the questions instead of actually being forced to answer anything. I was thinking the EC would ask questions like why nobody actually used the provisions that Apple so generously provided third party developers (obviously, because Apple designed them to be unworkable) but they mostly just stayed silent and let the Apple lawyers talk the entire time :(
Spivak
And, honestly, if I was Apple and got dragged to a "workshop" that had no teeth and wasn't legally binding I would have even less decorum than Apple's lawyers. If you had the power to actually make me do "$wishlist" you would have sued or fined me already.
nntwozz
I dream of an alternate reality where Steve Jobs makes snide remarks about politics, sets things right with the App Store (worldwide), Siri, Ai and the lackluster UI and quality control of software lately. Steve would get on top of things and speak his mind and we were all better off for it.
There's a severe lack of character in Tim Cook, I think the best thing to come out under his reign is the M-series hardware and return to sane computer design. He's timid, and his penny pinching fuckery is costing Apple a lot of goodwill that's a lot more precious and harder to gain back.
Maybe it's a shareholder problem, whatever—the early 2000's spirit of Apple was splendid.
rTX5CMRXIfFG
I admire Steve Jobs as a visionary as much as everyone else, but I never thought it was fair for people to keep discounting Tim Cook as the “lesser” man between the two. He was the one who took the company to a trillion dollar valuation. He took on the operations and supply chain work that no computer nerd or product visionary ever wants to take. He did the hard, unsexy work that no one wanted to do and yet people see him as worse for it.
lapcat
> He was the one who took the company to a trillion dollar valuation.
Are you comparing Cook to Jobs as an Apple investor or as an Apple customer? As an Apple customer, not an investor, I don't care at all about the company's stock market valuation.
Investors seem to love Tim Cook. Warren Buffett recently said that Tim Cook made more money for Berkshire Hathaway than Buffett himself did. But as an Apple customer, I don't give a crap about Buffett or Berkshire either.
The difference between Cook and Jobs is that Cook is a money person and not a product person. According to his biographer, Jobs lamented that Cook was not a product person. And IMO the products have suffered under Cook: not in terms of profit, but in terms of design and functionality, the things a discerning customer cares about.
I think what's special about Jobs was that, ironically, he had no special training. Of course he was smart, ambitious, and charismatic, but he wasn't an engineer (before Apple, Jobs outsourced some of his work to Woz and took credit for it), wasn't even a professional designer, and he certainly wasn't an MBA. He had no qualifications whatsoever to start a tech company. Jobs was simply a computer enthusiast who had the great luck of meeting a computer genius, Steve Wozniak. Since Jobs was ordinary in many respects, he was able to empathize with ordinary computer users; that was one of his primary roles within Apple. Jobs cared deeply about the user experience, from a first-person perspective. Few if any other massive tech companies have been built by such a founder.
MatthiasPortzel
It's easy to assume that Apple is where it is today because of Jobs. But when you look back, there are actually a number of key decisions made by Tim Cook since Job's death that led Apple here.
Cook has plenty of leadership vision. He's led Apple into the VR space with Vision Pro, and has pushed into services/content (Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Fitness+), and wearables (Beats acquisition, Apple Watch, AirPods). He's defined Apple as a company that cares about privacy, and it's because of him that Apple is so stubbornly fighting regulation in the EU and US.
If anything, you could criticize Cook for being too ambitious, if you thought that his attention to these areas came at the expense of iPhone & Mac quality.
bmicraft
You might call it ambitious to "so stubbornly fight regulation", I'd call it immoral and corrupt.
xandrius
Sane computer design, in what way?
I still see unopenable devices, batteries glued to death and even more closed systems. Next they reverted to liquid glass UI, is that sane?
humanpotato
I have no idea, as the two dumbest Macs, the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh and the "Trashcan" Mac, were before and after Jobs, respectively.
inatreecrown2
the keyboards on the laptops don't break in masses for one.
nntwozz
Not silly thin and overheating is the main way, your criticism is still valid though.
DragonStrength
Timid? Dude seems pretty ruthless by all anecdotes and how his company has operated. But he has a quiet demeanor and Southern accent, so many will assume he is weak and stupid. He seems to use it to his advantage.
jeroenhd
Steve Jobs was an asshat and the restrictions Apple puts on their software are exactly in line with what he would've done. He was firmly against third party apps on the iPhone in the first place and had to be convinced to permit it. Everything Apple is doing right now is in line with what Apple was doing when Jobs was still around. He would've had plenty to talk about, but none of it would be about no longer infringing users' rights.
Back in the early 2000's when Apple was still the cool, alternative, underdog computer company, it did things very differently, but for the same reason as it always did: make a profit.
inatreecrown2
your dream sound cool, would love to see it play out in some form!
jjcob
The saddest part of this whole fiasco is that Apple itself is suffering from the lack of competition.
Apple Watch for example gets a huge boost from being the only wearable that integrates with iOS. But it has a lot of quality issues, and is by far the worst Apple product in my opinion. Apple would have a lot more incentive to improve it if they had to compete with other smart watches on a level playing field.
danieldk
Yeah. I recently got a Garmin Watch after years of using an Apple Watch. On Android you can enable/disable notifications per app. On iOS you are stuck with all or nothing because Apple does not permit the same amount of integration as they permit their own products.
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nonethewiser
>The saddest part of this whole fiasco is that Apple itself is suffering from the lack of competition.
The Apple watch suffers in your scenario. Not necessarily Apple.
innocentoldguy
What quality issues have you experienced? I've owned almost every Apple Watch since their debut and have never had an issue with any of them.
dan-robertson
I’m a bit conflicted: when I used to care more about this freedom stuff say 10 years ago, I would have been more in favour of these regulations. Today I care less about that and more about security and I mostly think that Apple’s preferred approach is better for security than what the EU proposes. That said, I am not super happy about the rate of scams or junk in the App Store.
I think even for Americans who like the anti-gatekeeper regulations, you might worry about the precedent for the powers European governments get over these tech companies as the other thing they want is removing as much encryption as reasonably possible, which you may not want. Those changes seem quite unavoidable though so maybe it’s not worth thinking about them together.
The more damning thing IMO is the whole ‘America innovates Europe regulates’ trend. I think it seems pretty important that the EU (and U.K.) work out how to escape the anti-innovation troughs they have found themselves in. Or perhaps by 2050 the EU will largely be a tourist destination where citizens watch ads for the American tech companies to make profits to be highly taxed by the EU to fund subsidies for the German auto industry to sell cars to Americans and Chinese.
danieldk
Today I care less about that and more about security and I mostly think that Apple’s preferred approach is better for security than what the EU proposes.
This is mostly a false dichotomy that Apple likes to push. macOS has strong security with sandboxing, code signing, malware scanning, etc. I have never encountered someone among my direct acquaintances who had their Mac compromised. Yet, it's perfectly possible to make an alternative app store, circumvent code singing, etc. on a Mac.
Even with the freedom of an EU iPhone, you can still choose to completely stay in the Apple ecosystem and pretend that the extra freedoms that you have gained aren not there.
The thing is that Apple knows that people will purchase from an alternative reputable store if the prices are lower because the margins are lower. Or that developers will move there because they can increase their margins. And then Apple will actually have to compete on price (app store fee) and features.
It has very little to do with security and mostly with Apple wanting to keep their 15%/30% because it's hugely profitable.
the precedent for the powers European governments get over these tech companies as the other thing they want is removing as much encryption as reasonably possible
This does not make any sense at all. Why would you remove encryption, you could just accept an additional root certificate as a user and be protected by the same encryption.
I think it seems pretty important that the EU (and U.K.) work out how to escape the anti-innovation troughs they have found themselves in.
We are doing fine, we just don't believe in profit over everything. Moreover, the current US tech feudalism makes it harder to innovate and develop competitors, because you only get to do what the feudalist overlord permits you to do. Regulation is necessary to make it a fair marketplace again.
xandrius
I think you are seeing it slightly skewed: in the past, for a variety of reasons, the US got at the forefront of tech and got even richer in some pockets of the country.
The EU and other countries had some pretty compelling competitors which got more or less slowly crushed by the US.
After over 30 years of this, a handful of the remaining US megacorps turned around and started fencing their own little profitable field, disallowing anyone else to even try to get in.
EU is the only non-purely adversarial entity to uphold laws also to these seemingly untouchable megacorps.
What I find weird is that there is a selective memory in people who are either from the US or pro-big businesses where on one side they are openly against these claims the EU makes (calling them anti-innovation) while also being a fervent supporter of "liberal" policies like medicaid, right to repair, warranties and such. As if they do not realise that they stem from the exact same place, and often they do come directly from Europe.
I'm at a point where I believe that if someone is against what the EU is doing against these megacorps (not saying everything the EU does is gold btw) has either A) vested interest in such companies, B) hates the concept of EU and anything it touches, C) they are rich and don't really care about anything, D) not very bright.
ThatMedicIsASpy
The whole tech house of cards would fall apart if tracking a user is made illegal - or serving ads based on any sort of tracking.
saubeidl
> as the other thing they want is removing as much encryption as reasonably possible, which you may not want
This is the wish of a vocal, but powerless minority, not an actual law. It often gets misused as anti-EU FUD.
anupj
Apple’s DMA “compliance” feels less like opening the walled garden and more like planting hedges around the new gate. The irony is, for a company obsessed with seamless user experience, they’re making interoperability as convoluted as possible, unless, of course, you’re using Safari.
jjcob
I think at this point we should change the law so that Gatekeepers aren't just required to enable competition, but are somehow forced to actually support competition.
I'm not sure how we could enforce that, but maybe the law could stipulate that a certain minimum percentage of users must use 3rd party app stores, or use web apps. They should pay a fine if less than say 5% of apps are distributed outside the app store, or if less than 5% of people use a 3rd party browser engine.
AJ007
This entire thing is a convoluted mess that exists just to employ EU bureaucrats.
The solution is pretty simple: Apple is no longer allowed to run an "App Store" or distribute a pre-installed web browser. This part can be split apart as a separate company if they prefer that to shutting it down. When you look at Apple's taxable income, most of it goes to Ireland. It's very bizarre to call a company that makes everything in China and holds all of its IP in the EU a US company. It isn't.
Apple does what the Chinese government tells it to (see Apple in China by Patrick McGee.) If they pulled the EU stuff over there, Apple would cease to have new hardware to sell.
viktorcode
I'm not sure if you are serious or not with that proposition that would treat gatekeepers more strict than monopolies.
Regardless, I wanted to point out the obvious: each new broad regulation increases the cost of operating in the market where said regulation applies. The gatekeepers of today might not leave, but every new potential newcomer will calculate is it even worth it to operate in a market like that? Maybe it pays off to invest hundred of millions into lawyers and lobbying instead of technologies? Or maybe we'll skip EU market altogether (for reference, according to a courtroom statement Apple gets 7% of their revenue from Europe)
bzzzt
First they have to enable competition, you're saying they have to support it but seemingly you want to enforce it. Where does it stop? Should Apple just pay out a part of their profits to their competitors?
If a competitor wants market share they have to build a better service. Forcing users to go with a bad deal gets the incentives all wrong and is actually bad for consumer choice.
madeofpalk
> If a competitor wants market share they have to build a better service.
Except when Apple ensures that it always comes out ahead when competing. It's not a level playing field.
Look at Apple Music vs Spotify - ignoring the self-preferencing iOS does to Appke Music, the App Store ensures that Spotify will always make less money than Apple Music. Spotify either has to hand over 30% to its competitor, raise its prices (and lose customers, while still paying its competitor), or just not offer in-app signups. Do you reckon Apple Music has to give away 30% of it's subscriptions?
It seems bonkers that the only option to have a competitive music streaming service is to make your own operating system or mobile phone. That's unhealthy.
bzzzt
Not offering in-app signups doesn't seem to make Spotify less dominant. I'm in the Netherlands, almost everybody I know has a Spotify subscription, I know just one guy using Apple music.
The 30% fee also drops to 15% after one year, and there are companies that negotiated lower fees. Also, 'doing it yourself' won't be free, you still need some party to do payment processing, customer service and returns which also can come close to that 15%.
The argument you need to make your own phone seems a bit far-fetched. There are multiple music apps making money on iOS.
itopaloglu83
I think the EU started with the correct intentions. They saw a need to increase the competition in the digital marketplace and reduce the power iOS-Android duopoly has.
However, instead of defining the market rules, the process has been more about competitors and companies (who’re not happy with Apple’s success) trying to take a chunk of their business.
An iPhone is not a general computation device, it’s not an open ecosystem. Neither PlayStation, but there’s enough competition in the gaming console sector so nobody comes up with complains about not being able to install any app they want.
Edit: spelling and clarity.
lxgr
> An iPhone is not a general computation device, it’s not an open ecosystem.
And yet it's many people's primary computing device. That's exactly the problem.
As a historical example, consider telecommunications. Phone networks were "natural monopolies" for many decades, and people must have found it hard to imagine any other way back then. Without regulatory intervention enforcing competition, we'd probably still be paying double-digit cent amounts for long-distance calls.
ohdeargodno
> Forcing users to go with a bad deal gets the incentives all wrong and is actually bad for consumer choice.
Nice bad faith strawman, where'd you buy it ?
Apple is trying to have its cake and eat it too, selling off their devices as general computing devices and opening it partly to external developers, taking away a massive portion of profits and threatening them when it's not advantageous to them. The entire point is that you _cannot_ build a better service because Apple is blocking you.
Sony isn't getting this treatment for the PS5, despite qualifying well for being a gatekeeper, because there's no pretenses of being an open market.
If Apple wants out of this, then let them close down the App Store.
OkPin
This is fascinating and troubling. Apple’s presentation felt more like a marketing defense than a compliance discussion. Their claim that meeting the DMA “current interpretation” is “impossible” really stood out, it’s almost like they’re banking on legal ambiguity to stall real change.
I’m curious: if Apple and Google are using workshops as delay tactics, what’s the EC’s real enforcement power here? Are small fines enough leverage or do we need tougher mechanisms, like mandatory timelines or public transparency on third-party integrations?
oaiey
Rule of law also means, that fair process is given. which takes time. It is a problem, 100% agree, but I prefer a slow enforcement because of this than a unjust enforcement.
As a European, I have to say I am generally impressed with the EU in these cases. I'm from a country that's rich and capable, but with a GDP a fraction of Apple's market cap. There is no chance that national laws and entities would be sufficient to protect my consumer rights from corporations this size.
The EU is fundamentally a centre-right, liberalist, pro-business coalition, but what that means is that it is pro-competition. What's really impressive is that it seems to mostly refrain from devolving into protectionist policies, giving no preferential treatment to European businesses against international (intercontinental?) competitors, despite strong populist tendencies in certain member states.