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Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#161

Post by wasmitnetzen »

threeseed wrote: post #7
kvdveer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would IpadOS not be held to the same DSA rules as IOS? Apple has applied the same model of gatekeeping (walled garden) to both the iPhone and the iPad. DSA attaches requirements to the gatekeepers if they are big enough. Software similarity and market positioning don't really come into consideration once the role of gatekeeper has been established.

[flagged]

It's purely arbitrary to say iPadOS is a separate thing. They could just say there's an iPadAirOS, and an iPadProOS, or an iPadAir64GBOS, or ...

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#162

Post by toyg »

draugadrotten wrote: post #136
pjerem wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that EU also have computers engineers ? It’s not like we couldn’t survive without Apple or Google. Probably nobody wants it to happen but if it were to happen, well, I prefer regulated companies than monopolies.

> You know that EU also have computers engineers ? It’s not like we couldn’t survive without Apple or Google. You vastly underestimate how interconnected and dependent the modern tech stack is. EU computer engineers would be thrown back to 1950s if they could not depend on decades of US engineering and services. I say that as a European. EU is clearly playing a losing game here and is well on track of becoming the wo…

Apple and Google are not "decades of US engineering". They are two corporations that really exploit decades of (open source) US (and European) engineering to siphon huge profits to tax havens. If they were to exit the EU market, Europeans would still have access to US engineering just fine.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#163

Post by varispeed »

changoplatanero wrote: post #149
DCKing wrote: post #67

The iPad App Store is perhaps an even more dysfunctional place than the iPhone in how much it holds hardware and use cases hostage to the manufacturer's vision. Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it in the moments you want to do anything remotely tinkery on an iPad. Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads h…

Is it right to say that currently the cost of the hardware is being partly subsidized by the profits Apple makes from the software? If some of the profit from the software gets taken away will we see the price of the hardware rise?

The cost of custom chips is massive, but then manufacturing is cheap - after selling N units to pay off the initial investment, it's almost free (unit cost) when done at scale.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#164

Post by wasmitnetzen »

threeseed wrote: post #10
codetrotter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_... They had valid reasons for it.

It doesn't change the fact that it's arbitrary at this point. There are no rules that are governing what is or isn't a gatekeeper. It's just whatever EC decides that day.

There's literally a law, in a functional democracy. Doesn't get more rules-based than that.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#165

Post by ghusto »

rsynnott wrote: post #129
Longhanks wrote: post #118

With these legislations, I always wonder how the lawmakers come up with timeframes like 6 months. Who is to say this implementation doesn't take, say, a year? I doubt lawmakers have the technological know how to estimate such a project (actually, I doubt anyone has) - but 6 months seems rather short (given they hadn't just had to implement the same thing for iOS)...?

> given they hadn't just had to implement the same thing for iOS You've kind of answered this for yourself; iPadOS _is_ iOS. Apple has, in any case, presumably more or less known this was coming for a year or so; they kind of had to make the argument that iPadOS and iOS were not the same thing, I suppose, but it was always a bit far-fetched that the EC would buy that.

It was actually due to the way "gatekeeper" is defined. The EU has now said that although iPads (still) do not meet the criteria, they are being explicitly targeted anyway. My guess is because this is simpler than expanding the criteria to include iPads in some way.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#166

Post by lupusreal »

massysett wrote: post #147
lupusreal wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will have the choice of installing or not installing the software you wish. The "choice" as you're describing it is a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome.

I might not want that choice. That requires that I use my brain as I use the device and not do the harmful thing. Or maybe I want to hand the device to my child and be assured that she cannot install software, or use it as a publicly-accessible kiosk and be assured members of the public can’t break it. People who have handed Windows PCs to software illiterates and have to constantly return to eradicate crapware under…

Having a choice will not harm you. The "brainpower" required to stick to one appstores is virtually nil, evidenced by the vast majority of android users sticking with only the play store. You don't want other people to have that choice because you're a sycophant for a corporation.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#167

Post by Zr40 »

meepmorp wrote: post #153
gtufano wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is not-impactful is not true. The disappearance of indie software that do not depend on a remote server (or that's not software on a remote server) is basically due to the inability to monetize with sales native, stand-alone, software. And that's for the piracy. In some way, the success of the App Store towards indie/solo developers is because there was a way to sell things without the piracy easily steal your…

Piracy literally cannot affect the economic wellbeing of content or software producers. It is logically impossible! If it weren't, you wouldn't be experiencing this cascade of downvotes, so get with the program.

This would be true if the only alternative to piracy is not using said content or software. If paying is a valid alternative to a nonzero fraction of pirate users if piracy was not an option, then the piracy does affect the creators economically.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#168

Post by d0mine »

BillyTheKing wrote: post #108
DCKing wrote: post #67

The iPad App Store is perhaps an even more dysfunctional place than the iPhone in how much it holds hardware and use cases hostage to the manufacturer's vision. Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it in the moments you want to do anything remotely tinkery on an iPad. Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads h…

totally agree - the iPad Pro could be a great second coding/programming tool - I'd love to justify buying myself one, but.. I just don't see a use-case if I can't work on it. I don't design stuff, don't really feel like I need a separate browsing device either

iPad (any model) with keyboard-cover can be used as a great portable ssh/mosh terminal (eg with Termius app). I work in Emacs--most functionality is available via terminal.

Re: Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

#170

Post by neya »

Almost a decade ago, I bought an iPad Air to try and replace my MacBook Pro. It didn't work and had to resort to laggy online editors with paid subscriptions. And even then, when I was doing Ruby on Rails, it didn't even work out. Ok, so, the technology was new, sure.

Last year I got myself an M series iPad "Pro" thinking things would have changed. Well, VS Code was the only product that allowed me to run a tiny VM to edit and deploy my apps online. It worked really well to its credit despite a little bit of hacks (have to save it as a Safari shortcut) but still, a far cry from replacing my MacBook Pro.

I have the same M series Mac mini back home that I do insane multi-tasking on and something I would claim is easily the best god damn computer ever made for IT devs like myself. That's when I realized, the limitation is in the OS and not the hardware. The iPad "Pro" is really powerful for a lot of other stuff. Photo editing, music creation and what not.

Ironically, I saw someone on YouTube get annoyed with the same problem and use a Raspberry Pi attached with the iPad as a MacBook Pro replacement (it draws power from the iPad itself, so it's a single cable solution). I was amazed and sad at the same time that Apple had to push their neglected audience so far to the point of even bundling our own DIY hardware to make it usable to call it a "Pro". The iPad's "Pro" is such a misnomer.

I am still waiting for the day when I can throw away my MacBook Pro and work from a small factor without carrying a brick to charge a 14", almost 3Kg device in my office bag every day.

Hopefully this changes things.

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