iOS 26.3 Brings AirPods-Like Pairing to Third-Party Devices in EU Under DMA
59 comments
·December 23, 2025jwr
Y-bar
They also capped credit card fees at 0.3% in 2015. It also included a prohibition on discrimination against any merchant based on eg size or category of goods sold. And as far as I can see neither Mastercard nor Visa had problems staying in business.
whazor
So you cannot compare it apples to oranges. There is much more regulation in EU.
In EU there is also more consumer protection by default, so charge backs can be rejected by merchants but a consumer can easily take a merchant to court. So capping card fees is also more reasonable.
Also, when a merchant goes bankrupt and customers perform charge-backs it would involve the entire payment chain. First merchant reserves, then acquiring bank, then MasterCard/Visa, then issuing bank (customer), and lastly the customer. With lower card fees, this has impact on the merchant reserves and their risk profile. Furthermore, acquirers can add additional fees on top if needed.
You can also get lower card fees in US if you have a low risk business model.
jwr
Yes! I forgot about this. The EU Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) effectively eliminated the high fixed minimum fees that previously made small-value card transactions unprofitable for merchants.
The net effect of this is that in Poland, for example, you can carry your phone and no wallet, because you can pay literally for everything using your phone. And I do mean everything, I've recently been to a club in Warsaw and the cloakroom had a terminal mounted on the wall, people just tapped their phones.
idle_zealot
Yeah, all too often discussion devolves into a religious war between free markets and regulation. Like they're somehow opposing forces. Markets are super cool and useful tools. Some regulation is good, some is bad, which exactly is which depends on your values and what you want to optimize for. Framing markets like they automatically do good, or ideas like "we need more regulation" or "we need fewer regulations" are all thought-terminating.
So far the DMA seems like a partial-win for technology users. I wish it enshrined the right to run software on your own computer in less ambiguous language, because as-is there are carve-outs that may let Apple get away with their core technology fee and mandatory app signing.
neya
Yesterday, I was trying to get a voice memo out of my Apple watch - on which the recording was made. I switched from Apple last year. My cousin had an iPhone. Apple would not let me transfer the voice memo out of their eco-system. It's not on my iCloud and the watch can no longer be paired with any other iOS device (even temorarily with authentication to transfer a file)...unless the iPhone is registered to me. This is malicious compliance in the name of security.
And mind you, I own 3 Apple devices - 2 Macs and 1 iPad and the watch can't connect to any of those. I must be forced to buy a $1000 device just because I made the mistake of recording something on their watch. We need more regulation because of things like this and I would absolutely hate to live in a society where this is the norm.
ggsp
If you are not using iCloud, you could try activating it (you get 5 gigs for free IIRC) and switching off everything besides the Voice Memos app. Then you should see the recording on your Mac, and should be able to export it from there. Definitely a shitty workaround, but you might be able to make it work?
fersarr
also usbc in iphones! finally we can just carry one cable
littlestymaar
I'm very glad we eventually got standardized chargers. It's too bad the standard happened to be the madness that USB-C is though.
raverbashing
Even the most maligned lids attached to bottles looks stupid for 5 minutes but have the nice side effect of not having to hold the lid while you drink, which makes things easier most of the time you're holding something else
rikafurude21
Recently bought an apple watch for my mom and got it set up with her iphone. Almost instantly she notices that she cant accept WhatsApp calls on her watch, and after looking into it I found out that it was another one of those apple things where they assume youre obviously using facetime so that functionality isnt available for any other app. For context, in europe Whatsapp is the dominating messaging app and alot of people use it for calling as well as messaging. The apple watch is, as far as I can tell, a simple Bluetooth wearable with a speaker and a microphone, so the only reason its like this is that apple has a concept of how the device is "supposed" to be used and only lets you use it that way. After that experience I fully support all the regulations the EU is putting on apple to open up.
aprilnya
Huh, with CallKit’s existence I would have assumed any app using CallKit would work on Watch…
isodev
It’s fascinating the kind of cool features we can have when products are made to be useful, with their target user in mind. Go EU!
Y-bar
Three months ago a commenter here on HN claimed to me that this will be bad for Apple users:
> There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have. If the third party device doesn’t work people will blame Apple even though it’s not their fault.
And, competition probably can’t build for it anyway:
> It’s impossible to build Apple Silicon level of quality in power to watt performance or realtime audio apps over public APIs.
And:
> […] Apple has to sabotage their own devices performance and security to let other people use it. The EU has no business in this.
Well, I look forward to next year when we’ll have the receipts and see!
vachina
It's bad because Apple now has to (OFFICIALLY) support a wider range of devices.
And then there is less incentive for Apple to further improve this interface because any improvements will benefit non-Apple devices (i.e. do the foundational work but everyone else gets the positive exposure)
x3ro
You mean it will benefit Apple’s customers, who prefer headphones not made by Apple? If only the incentive for Apple to improve their interface was that its paying customers will have a better interface.
stavros
I really don't understand people who defend Apple on this. The only reason I can imagine is that they're shareholders who don't use any Apple products, or shareholders who use exclusively Apple products and can't understand what sort of poor scrub might want an accessory not made by them.
vachina
non-apple headphones work just fine with Apple products. In fact, Apple's bluetooth stack seem to work best among all the portable devices I come across (no random droppings, connects on first try etc.)
SvenL
Based on the latest iOS / MacOS update they don’t want to improve their interfaces anyway.
madspindel
Apple should dump their Product Managers and hire the EU bureaucrats directly then we will finally see improvements and innovations again.
dsign
Let’s call them bureaucrats, but let’s not forget that their baseline is to be public servants, while that of product managers is to increase profits :-) . I think the system is working as intended though, because increasing profits can be a great driver for innovation and service to the consumer, until it’s not and the “immune system” (the bureaucracy) must be called on to fight the uncontrolled pathological growth…
officialchicken
Brussels primary interest is the process, not the people.
If you don't think there isn't any "uncontrolled pathological growth" anywhere in the EU, then you should look at ALL OF THE LEGALLY SANCTIONED GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES HERE.
End of story.
null
Vespasian
It's a tragedy, though no surprise, that this is required
I guess "the regulations will continue until product management improves".
heavyset_go
Currently, on the AirPods side and not iOS side like the article covers, Apple breaks Bluetooth feature parity with other devices by not sticking to the Bluetooth spec with AirPods themselves.
For example, you need to root and patch your Bluetooth stack on your phone if you want to use all of your AirPods features on Android, and not because Android is doing something wrong, it's because the Android Bluetooth stack actually sticks to the spec and AirPods don't.
And even when you do that, you can't do native AAC streaming like you can with iOS/macOS. Even if you're listening to AAC encoded audio, it'll be transcoded again as 256kbps AAC over Bluetooth.
Even no name earbuds on Amazon manage to not break Bluetooth and can offer cross platform high quality audio over Bluetooth.
aprilnya
On the other hand, there’s been a bug open to make a simple harmless change to fix this in Android for 9 months, with no response from Google other than asking for reproduction steps as far as I can tell.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238
Some comments on the bug accuse Google of intentionally not fixing it to make people buy Pixel Buds instead of AirPods.
I wouldn’t say that myself, but then again I also wouldn’t say that Apple intentionally violated the spec just to make AirPods not work on Android.
worldsavior
They do this on purpose if you didn't get it. Google will never "fix" this issue because they follow the spec. They shouldn't have to add an exception for AirPods.
bluescrn
Can headphones that stick to the spec actually play nicely with multiple devices? - switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?
eptcyka
I can stop music on my phone and immediately listen to music from my laptop. I have non-apple headphones, a non-apple laptop and an iPhone. There is no apple magic dust that makes this happen.
formerly_proven
> switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?
They do that? Mine can't even switch quickly between my corporate and my own iphone.
clayhacks
So this tap to pair won’t work in the US? The side loading stuff I can understand to restrict to the EU, but this just seems like a nice feature for everyone
justapassenger
Apple is not really interested in giving you nice features that makes it easier for you to escape their ecosystem and have Apple make less money.
Otek
> The side loading stuff I can understand to restrict to the EU
Just curious: why do you understand they restrict it to EU?
hu3
It's pretty clear isn't it?
They do so with third-party app stores.
And if they wanted to have airpods-like pairing to third-parties in US, they would already have.
The only reason they might bring this to US is customers will be royally pissed.
null
Arn_Thor
Where there's a will--or a law--there's a way. Hallelujah!
Lio
I wonder, could this means we get better support for things like sending messages from Garmin smartwatches?
Previously, this was available on Android but not iOS as Apple didn’t expose the APIs for watches other than their own.
lloeki
Depending on how you look at it, there may be two distinct parts to this:
a) API to not just read notifications but also perform the notification quick actions (if any), e.g snooze for a calendar event, mark complete for a reminder, and of course reply for a text (SMS or otherwise). This seems entirely reasonable and ludicrous that it doesn't exist.
b) API to access SMS / Messages. That one appears to be heavily guarded because security / E2E (for iMessage).
I mention b) because a lot of times people invoke the problem a being b) (and possibly a problem in its own right, forcing one to use Messages for SMS) but really for watches a) is sufficient and probably much more relevant.
There's also a.1) API access to media (images) in notifications.
In any case, DMA could definitely help crack both.
port3000
I would settle for my Garmin not disconnecting every few days at this point
Lio
I mean I’d settle for the status quo and Garmin itself not deleting big parts of my watch faces.
The last update from Garmin did this to my Epix. Funnily enough the complications can still be activated if you touch the screen, they’re just invisible.
Someone
FTA: “The changes to proximity pairing and notifications are only available for device makers […] in the European Union.”
Will that mean we’ll see some last step assembly move into the EU, or does it only require legal presence?
pzo
Yeah this would be weird if it's only for EU based companies. I think apple strategy is overall 'divide and conquer' making all different stuff working different in EU, Japan, UK, US. To this already many variables also if the user has account in EU and also if is living in EU or for how long. Their whole compliance is not robust and reliable making this in fact dead on arrival. Any maker relying on this will have more complains from customers. Customers will think that all non-apple solution are buggy and reliable and will stick with apple stuff.
zeristor
Would this include the UK I wonder?
isodev
It seems the UK will have to undertake their own procedure. Unless they rejoin before that (one can hope).
Someone
Likely not. FTA: “The changes to proximity pairing and notifications are only available for device makers and iPhone and iPad users in the European Union.”
matthewcanty
Just realised I’m not in the EU (from UK). There was me thinking about digging my old Garmin out!
saubeidl
Wow, it's almost as if regulations were necessary to curtail the worst excesses of capitalism and steer it towards user interest instead of maximal exploitation...
I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users.
Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good for users. Companies either become dominant, or universally screw over their users. Users either have no choice, do not understand the choices, or simply don't care.
I am glad the EU tries to do something. They aren't always right, but they should be trying. As a reminder, one of the biggest success stories of EU regulation: cheap cellular roaming within the EU. It used to be horribly expensive (like it is in the US), but the EU (specifically, Margrethe Vestager) regulated this and miracle of miracles, we can now move across the EU and not worry about horrendous cell phone bills.