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Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

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Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#741
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is economically meaningless on the grand scale. They are only 7% of Apple's revenue, and similarly low for other companies. And every day they become a less profitable market to operate in. The EU holds power only as long as the rest of the world is willing to deal with its BS. Trying to "break up Apple" is simply not within the EU's power as Apple is worth more than the EU's whole tech industry combined. Appl…

If US big tech doesn't need the EU, then why do they keep on bending to its will?

As long as the opportunity cost is positive it will stay. The EU is trying its hardest to make the opportunity cost negative.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#742
post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling a company they must implement an API is absolutely telling them to do work. And you're well within the right to refuse entirely.

Except they haven't told Apple to implement any APIs. They've told Apple to stop abusing their dominant market position and allow competing browser engines. Apple needs to do basically nothing to enable that, except to allow the same entitlements they already give Safari for other browsers, and to stop rejecting competing browsers in their policy and review. (If you disagree, can you name one of the APIs you think th…

Taking PWAs away is not "preventing other browser engines" on iOS. Apple is clearly in compliance with the law

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily use the dearth of meaningful consumer technology companies in the EU and their absurd overindexing on regulation as a predictor of what the EU's economy will look like. While the rest of the world dives into technology and AI, the EU will become a backwater, because the EU does not know how to craft regulation that balances innovation and "consumer good." It literally only focuses on the latter at all…

Tell me, how do you see life being in the Consumerism States of America in the future where the handful of mega corporations, that will have been allowed to behave and merge for monopolistic dominance with impunity for decades, will have such power and size that their employees will work in horrifying conditions for wages that barely (if even) can support them, all the while making the very few individuals at the top…

I see a life made far easier by AI that Europeans simply lack because they have adopted a "technology bad" mindset oblivious of the fact that half their siblings would have died in childhood if it wasn't for the technology they hate so much.

Don't know where you're getting your views on consumerism from, but it's not anything I've seen here.

Why as a tech worker do I need a union? Have you seen how they operate? They don't reward based on merit, but seniority. You're forced to join them and pay dues and the seniority passes the shittiest options down to you. I'd much rather work in big tech where I get rewarded for kicking ass.

The lack of worker rights in the US is a much smaller issue than the lack of technological muscle in the EU. Technology has a far greater impact on QoL historically.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “low usage” comment is going to be more ammo against Apple unfortunately. The whole reason they are low usage on PWAs is because of a lack of investment from Apple and a lack of parity, yet for the longest time Apple has played both sides by saying PWAs are a viable alternative to the App Store, all while channeling people to App Store for actual app downloads and not providing similar marketing or anything for P…

I recommend that everyone interested in this topic read some of the comments from PWA developers at: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268643 Apple’s decision is going to kill businesses and break apps used by hundreds of thousands of people in Europe, many of whom are healthcare workers delivering patient care.

Apple doesn't care, unfortunately for humans. Jerome Powell of the US federal reserve knew that he would put companies out of business, and people would lose jobs, when they raised the rates. In fact, that was the goal.

"In September, hiring was much greater than had been expected, with the unemployment rate staying near a half-century low. Strong hiring typically empowers workers to demand higher wages, which, in turn, can worsen inflation if their employers pass on the higher labor costs by raising their prices."

https://apnews.com/article/federal-reserve-inflation-economy...

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#745
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to a degree, that’s why developers tend to hate Apple. They paint us as a pack of crims trying to steal from unsuspecting Apple users.

I think you are conflating the relationship between consumers/developers and the corporation (that you work for?). I don't hate Apple, but rather realise that it's bottom line and fiduciary duty to its shareholders is stronger than what is best for us (consumers/developers). I do not trust the corporate marketing one bit (and honestly, why should I?). This behaviour of Apple just further supports that view. As a comp…

It’s possible to hate them and recognize why they’re doing at the same time though…although I do think there’s also a hefty dose of arrogance and self importance in there. I’m old enough to remember when we (devs) felt this way toward Microsoft…so if I was Tim Apple I’d include that risk in my calculus cause what came next was two decades in the penalty box.

Seems like they hate us (developers) back though so it’s a mutual relationship I suppose.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American dev I can't wait to see tech companies leave the EU and leave it in shambles as the EU realizes it never learnt how to innovate, only legislate and rent-seek from our companies. Frankly, the region needs us far more than we need it.

If it wasn't for Turing your job might not have been a thing. If it wasn't for Tim Berners-Lee, we might not have been here having this discussion. Hint: neither is/was American. Just to throw some examples.

What modern consumer-facing companies have come out of the EU in the past 20 years, besides Spotify? How is that list looking compared to the US?

That's all the evidence you need that the EU has seriously fucked up with regards to encouraging tech innovation.

A lack of tech innovation has terrifying implications for the EU long-term, such as reduced QoL, brain drain, economic decline, etc. - all of which are already in progress.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is completely wrong. Judges very much care about the spirit of the law, and frequently discuss it in their decisions, both in common law jurisdictions and in other systems. The justice system is not a computer following logical instructions.

Judges can talk about the spirit of the law all they want. If they don't base decisions on the letter of it they'll set themselves up to be overruled on appeal. Prosecutors also can't bring up charges on violating the spirit of a law.

So... appellate reasoning is even more likely to be founded on spirit arguments and not loopholes or context-free text readings. "Intent of the framers" is, obviously, very much an argument about spirit and not text. As always, there's a good wikipedia page to start from when discussing this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law

But in this particular case it's sort of a silly argument anyway as it cuts better in the opposite direction: the DMA is a big and complicated law and can be interpreted in a zillion ways. If courts and regulators are allowed to read laws as strictly as they want, I can all but guarantee that Apple is in violation of something.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#748
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should in theory have the same play store revenue motivation to hide PWAs, right? Granted, they also want people to stay on the web to continue using Google.com, so I guess those are two competing priorities. That to me is a bit of an indicator that Apple just doesn’t believe in the merits of the technology. I think they might be asking the same question in asking: what problem is this solving? Every platform…

Kind of, it's just that the approach Google takes is a lot more palatable than Apple's. As someone who has written a PWA (albeit one that almost entirely relies on SSR), Google's PWA approach is definitely better than Apple, but there's some marked issues. For one, the actual PWA packaging process gets shunted off to a Google server; I think you can make a "thin client" APK from a manifest using a tool they wrote som…

Tend to agree with all of this. Manifest is way too finicky.

Would be interesting to see how the play store changes in the event of Android honoring code signing for side loading like windows. Eg..no scare screen on side loaded apk’s as long as they’re code signed.

I suspect the App Store would live on as a consumer focused App Store and the enterprise apps would direct distribute which makes sense anyhow cause IAP does t understand account based pricing.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#749
post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of, it's just that the approach Google takes is a lot more palatable than Apple's. As someone who has written a PWA (albeit one that almost entirely relies on SSR), Google's PWA approach is definitely better than Apple, but there's some marked issues. For one, the actual PWA packaging process gets shunted off to a Google server; I think you can make a "thin client" APK from a manifest using a tool they wrote som…

Tend to agree with all of this. Manifest is way too finicky. Would be interesting to see how the play store changes in the event of Android honoring code signing for side loading like windows. Eg..no scare screen on side loaded apk’s as long as they’re code signed. I suspect the App Store would live on as a consumer focused App Store and the enterprise apps would direct distribute which makes sense anyhow cause IAP d…

Android doesn't do scare screens actually. The only real difference between installing an APK from the play store and an APK you found on the internet is that the application calling the installer has a one time "OK" to make sure you are the one who wants to install an APK; Play Store has this as well, but the default distribution has it turned on, by going in the settings you can fiddle with it and turn it off if you want to.

The only thing actually needed for feature parity with the Play Store is mostly just that F-Droid can't auto-update; the Play Store can skip the update/install prompt screen, F-Droid can't. They added install origins to APK files last year iirc, so there's a likely chance they're allowing it though.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this isn't a parlor game, I have no idea why they think the antitrust pressure will abate by such bad faith nonsense moves. Next step for the EU is to make Tim Cook choose whether he wants to be CEO of the device side or service side of the broken up Apple. It's clear that fining them is useless.

Ah yeah man EU is totally gonna break up apple. Some of y'all need to be reminded to be realistic.

No, not break them up, but fine the heck out of them
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