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iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

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Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#81
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you turn off location services, and use a european VPN, if you maintain access. If you do not have access, I would wonder if they would run across the problem google ran into with private browsing, that people expect to have privacy. In other words, if you turn off location services, that apple will not track your location and should have (legal) no way of knowing if you are inside or outside of the EU.

iPhone VPN's are not enabled when connecting with Apple's domains.

Can an iPhone operate while blocking all traffic to Apple?

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't - none of what Apple is doing is security. It's using the lack robust market competition to make tortured interpretations of DMA laws to continue to play rentier.

But I thought the only reason Apple prevented third-party stores and sideloaded apps in the first place was to improve security. Therefore, I’m sure that disabling app updates once someone spends a month outside the EU must improve security, too. Right!? /s

I was having exactly the same thought. Doesn't apple's new policy show all their arguments against the DMA are complete crap? They have acted in bad faith right from the start.

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#83
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I misunderstand, the apps still work? They just can't be updated after 30 days and you can't install new apps from the third party stores.

After MVP, the first security feature a mobile team should implement is a forced upgrade flow.

I don't disagree.

Given the barrier to entry and cost, with little benefit, if I were to guess, the Epic store might be the only "third party App Store" to ever see the light of day.

And the way that's going, even that is in doubt.

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#84
post #2

Apple really trying to be the asshole here. Imagine installing work apps that disappear after 30 days.. Also what happens if the user chooses not to share their live location with apple?

They don't lose access to the apps. I suspect the phone itself is what disables it, not sending the location to Apple.

If the phone would not send location data then it would need to store quite a bit of geographical data to be able to accurately say if you spend last 30 days in EU. That might be harder in border regions...

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#85
post #21
post #15

New business opportunity: A company that ships iPhones to Europe and installs/refreshes alternative app stores on them.

A company that produces a device that fakes GPS (with extremely weak RF so as not to draw the ire of FCC or other government bodies) to convince the phone it is in Europe.

Cell towers and wifi base stations announce country code too. There's no guarantee they're using GPS.

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#86
post #76
post #57

IIUC this is a deliberate act of aggression by Apple - which is important to note. Apple already has regional accounts, so the infrastructure for this is in place already, for preexisting reasons. My Apple ID is still within US after months of being in the EU. They have not “kicked me out” yet. There’s no other way than to interpret this, and the preceding actions by Apple, as a temper tantrum of malicious compliance…

It sounds like someone in Apple is burning the corporate brand to make their division's target because the target wasn't adjusted in the face of the law. Leadership at the top is at fault.

Apple is showing it's true colors here, and it's not the joyful rainbow of the past.

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#87

If this were a court case on TV, the next words from the EU/"prosecutor" should be, "Permission to treat the witness as hostile?"

This is wildly off-topic, but a prosecutor asking for a defense witness to be "treated as hostile" is redundant. They're hostile by default.

The request to "treat someone as hostile" is about their OWN witness that THEY introduced getting turned into a hostile aka opposition witness.

> A hostile witness is a witness who testifies against the party who has called them to testify. The examiner may ask a hostile witness leading questions, as in cross-examination. Also known as an adverse witness.

As I said, a witness from the other side is always hostile, so asking for it would never make sense.

To give an example: Criminal case, prosecutor brought in a on-scene witness to testify. But the witness is arguing against the prosecutor's case/evidence, so they request the judge to allow them to turn a witness hostile which allows a different style of questioning.

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#88
post #57

IIUC this is a deliberate act of aggression by Apple - which is important to note. Apple already has regional accounts, so the infrastructure for this is in place already, for preexisting reasons. My Apple ID is still within US after months of being in the EU. They have not “kicked me out” yet. There’s no other way than to interpret this, and the preceding actions by Apple, as a temper tantrum of malicious compliance…

It's just the reality of global compliance that products end up having to be customized for each region. We were lucky for a while that China was the only country that was overly special, but that time is over.

If you want an existing example of a phone changing stuff as you change countries just look at the modem. Different territories allow for different amounts of power to be used and the phone as has to know the laws to and adapt based off where it is in order to be compliant.

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I really don't get the "just get an android" type of response (even though the OP here is quite polite and I'm referring to other people arguing this). If something exhibits anti-competitive behaviour, it's great if competition exists, but it does not justify the behaviour which should still be subject to typical anti-competitive laws.

So instead make it impossible to create an alternative to Apple because now there isn’t a point? Someone could have come in and done everything better than Apple and more open, but now that’s impossible. Who would bother when they could just donate to the nearest EU politician to dictate what software change they want next?

You should lobby your nearest EU politician to stop platform-holders from creating anti-competitive conditions. It damages the market, and requires regular scrutiny to prevent the corporate bean counters from deploying salami tactics.

Because guess what? Apple isn't going away, their hardware will continue to be popular, and companies will compete with them regardless. Just because one business tactic has been deemed anticompetitive doesn't mean everything is, let alone that you can't continue providing the same features under fair pretenses. Apple chooses how they respond to the legislation, and right now they are deliberately steering themselves in the most victimizing and infantile direction possible. It makes me embarrassed to be an American, where many consider this behavior an... attribute of free-market patriotism. Barf.

Re: iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't - none of what Apple is doing is security. It's using the lack robust market competition to make tortured interpretations of DMA laws to continue to play rentier.

But I thought the only reason Apple prevented third-party stores and sideloaded apps in the first place was to improve security. Therefore, I’m sure that disabling app updates once someone spends a month outside the EU must improve security, too. Right!? /s

It doesn't disable app updates.

It prevents installing new apps.

Edit: Actually misread that. It might prevent updates.

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