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EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

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Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#91

Post by eszed »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #45
xvokcarts wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Develop stuff the way we want, or lose sales" I think the wants (of the EU buyers) are far less homogeneous than the group of open integration activists make it look like, so there's no "we". We hear the opinions of the vocal ones and based on those voices regulation is enacted, but nothing changes for the silent majority. However, a lot of people in the EU may start caring if they can no longer buy what they want…

EU buyer here, I am extremely hype for forced interop and think it almost justifies the existence of the EU on its own. Sure, most people don't care. That's the case for every regulation - policy is made by activists. Better than by corporations any day.

US buyer here, and I'm incredibly grateful to the EU for pushing this rope in a consumer-friendly direction.

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#92

Post by [deleted] »

monooso wrote: post #84
intrasight wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would disabling certain features in certain markets hostile to their business model result in 20% revenue loss?

I realise this wasn't your point, but there is something deeply dystopian about referring to the EU's attempt to act in the best interests of its citizens as "hostile to [Apple's] business model."

[deleted]

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#93

Post by tpmoney »

rickdeckard wrote: post #83
ChocolateGod wrote: post #3

As cool how unified the Apple ecosystem is, I do think the EU is right that it's extremely unfair for Apple to give its own smartwatches access to the phone that other smartwatches have zero chance of getting access to.

Nothing restricts Apple from continuing to be this unified in their ecosystem. What the EU DMA tries to break, is Apple's "weaponization" of iOS to gain an unfair advantage in sales of accessories. So if Apple (the product-company) requires changes in iOS to realize a new feature in an accessory product, the changes in iOS will have to be opened to accessory-competitors as well. They would still be first-to-market wi…

Open protocols are great but they are also absolutely a hindrance on change. If you’ve ever worked on a public API you know how painful making a breaking change to that API can be. Inevitably something you want to change becomes some one else’s “hold space bar to heat room” feature. And sure you can have “private” Or reserved spaces in APIs, but that can often lead to messes like needed 5 different vendor specific CSS tags to accomplish the same thing in all browsers, which in turn really leads to consolidation around one “winner” (see also IE6 and Chrome). They might very well still be able to make unified systems on open APIs and platforms, but it’s not clear whether they would be able to make them as well as they do when they control and own the whole stack and can change it without having to worry about anyone else.

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#94

Post by rickdeckard »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #80
ChocolateGod wrote: post #3

As cool how unified the Apple ecosystem is, I do think the EU is right that it's extremely unfair for Apple to give its own smartwatches access to the phone that other smartwatches have zero chance of getting access to.

I play an Apple apologist online (sometimes). Most here would agree that a public API is a liability regardless. Anything you can keep private (SPI) you should. Opening up an API that has all manner of hooks into your Apple device is going to be (obviously, I think) one of the most challenging of API to expose. While a 3rd party watch might needs these API, a whole lot of n'r-do-wells (looking at you, Meta) will like…

Apple is using closed-down features in iOS to gain an unfair advantage in Sales of accessories.

They are still fine to do that, but at the moment such a new feature/accessory is launched by Apple the necessary interfaces in iOS also needs to be available to competitors.

The result is that Apple will still be first with such features as they can orchestrate the launch of the feature in iOS with the product. They will still have a leg up in marketing and scale, as they will be able to market directly to their users and instantly sell in much larger volume.

They will JUST face a better balanced market where competitors will be able to catch up and match the experience.

The fact that this is causing any backlash at all is surprising. Apple still has the best cards in this game, they are just not allowed to change the rules in their favor all the time.

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#95

Post by catchnear4321 »

rickdeckard wrote: post #83
ChocolateGod wrote: post #3

As cool how unified the Apple ecosystem is, I do think the EU is right that it's extremely unfair for Apple to give its own smartwatches access to the phone that other smartwatches have zero chance of getting access to.

Nothing restricts Apple from continuing to be this unified in their ecosystem. What the EU DMA tries to break, is Apple's "weaponization" of iOS to gain an unfair advantage in sales of accessories. So if Apple (the product-company) requires changes in iOS to realize a new feature in an accessory product, the changes in iOS will have to be opened to accessory-competitors as well. They would still be first-to-market wi…

the existing os alongside the new instructions could restrict apple plenty

unless you are saying you have inside knowledge about the amount of refactoring and new development necessary to comply, that would be fascinating to hear more about

such restrictions would be likely to spill over into customer impact

> you’re speculating

which is essentially the same as providing an estimate in a work setting

so… yes

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#96

Post by rickdeckard »

tpmoney wrote: post #93
rickdeckard wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing restricts Apple from continuing to be this unified in their ecosystem. What the EU DMA tries to break, is Apple's "weaponization" of iOS to gain an unfair advantage in sales of accessories. So if Apple (the product-company) requires changes in iOS to realize a new feature in an accessory product, the changes in iOS will have to be opened to accessory-competitors as well. They would still be first-to-market wi…

Open protocols are great but they are also absolutely a hindrance on change. If you’ve ever worked on a public API you know how painful making a breaking change to that API can be. Inevitably something you want to change becomes some one else’s “hold space bar to heat room” feature. And sure you can have “private” Or reserved spaces in APIs, but that can often lead to messes like needed 5 different vendor specific CS…

> Open protocols are great but they are also absolutely a hindrance on change. If you’ve ever worked on a public API you know how painful making a breaking change to that API can be.

I worked on public API's. If there's a justified need for a breaking change, make a new API and deprecate the old one. It can of course be harder than this, but its complication mainly comes from proper PLANNING of the action and AWARENESS of the environment.

It's an OS, let's treat it as such and not buy into this narrative how hard and unfair the world is to this trillion dollar company.

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#97

Post by JKCalhoun »

roblabla wrote: post #90
JKCalhoun wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play an Apple apologist online (sometimes). Most here would agree that a public API is a liability regardless. Anything you can keep private (SPI) you should. Opening up an API that has all manner of hooks into your Apple device is going to be (obviously, I think) one of the most challenging of API to expose. While a 3rd party watch might needs these API, a whole lot of n'r-do-wells (looking at you, Meta) will like…

Apple has many, many tools to prevent this from being a problem. To name a few: - They can lock the API behind entitlements that must be manually requested and reviewed by Apple - They can lock the API behind a user approval - They can regularly prompt the user if they still wish to share notification data with the watch (same way they do to keep giving an app localisation data) - They could enforce that the notifica…

Yeah, you're right. Not easy, but do-able.

Apple, probably due to their success and size, are trying "Make me!" as a response until, you know, someone makes them. But they're not willing to voluntarily offer these API up.

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#98

Post by Despacito2019 »

roblabla wrote: post #85
tpmoney wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it would be easier to believe that Apple locking down access to things is the problem if anything at all comparable to their experiences existed outside. Yet whenever this discussion comes up, the answer to “why not just use Android’s ecosystem” largely seems to be that no such similar experience exists for Android. But why would that be the case if this was about Apple locking stuff down? Surely if a lac…

> Surely if a lack of open phone OS and feature access was the problem, we’d see a rich ecosystem of integrations that exist on Android devices that are just impossible to achieve on iOS right? It's entirely possible on Android? Pebble used to have decent integration with Android, from notifications/calls, to music controls, to sports tracking/health data. You could even get navigation integration! And that was a dec…

garmin watch works like this at the moment on android and subpar on ios

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#99

Post by pimterry »

tpmoney wrote: post #71
ChocolateGod wrote: post #3

As cool how unified the Apple ecosystem is, I do think the EU is right that it's extremely unfair for Apple to give its own smartwatches access to the phone that other smartwatches have zero chance of getting access to.

I feel like it would be easier to believe that Apple locking down access to things is the problem if anything at all comparable to their experiences existed outside. Yet whenever this discussion comes up, the answer to “why not just use Android’s ecosystem” largely seems to be that no such similar experience exists for Android. But why would that be the case if this was about Apple locking stuff down? Surely if a lac…

> Surely if a lack of open phone OS and feature access was the problem, we’d see a rich ecosystem of integrations that exist on Android devices that are just impossible to achieve on iOS right?

...yes, and that's exactly what has happened. Android has a thriving ecosystem of excellent smartwatches (Garmin, Pebble, Fitbit, Samsung & Pixel watches, etc) with lots of features (particularly around notifications and interactions with apps on the device) that are impossible to support on iOS. https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-... has some concrete details.

Re: EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and devices

#100

Post by xvokcarts »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #89
xvokcarts wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>EU buyer here, I am extremely hype for forced interop and think it almost justifies the existence of the EU on its own. That was my point. There is no "we". >That's the case for every regulation - policy is made by activists. Maybe, but when regulation made by activists starts touching the lives of people that don't care about the thing activists want, they may not like the idea of activists deciding for them. So fa…

> Maybe, but when regulation made by activists starts touching the lives of people that don't care about the thing activists want, they may not like the idea of activists deciding for them. That's not just any regulation, that's any act of government. > we don't know how most people will react if suddenly something they want is not available to them because of a minority that think their expertise is above their want…

> My best guess, tbh, is apathy. That's rather why they're not activists in the first place.

Exactly. A few people want interoperability and everyone accepts it because they don't care since it doesn't affect their lives. I'm not a policy expert, but this seems a bit like riding the high horse. The answer to "what's best for others" should not be "that which we want for ourselves" regardless of expertise.

We're not talking about regulation improving human lives in general. We're talking about regulation that will stick it to foreign companies we think are too big, in the name of enabling competition, which will again, due to the real reasons for EU tech decline, come from the USA.

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