Live data from Hacker News

Apple vs the Law

formularsumo.co.uk

111–120 of 450 posts

Re: Apple vs the Law

#111
I get the spirit of the DMA. I get the whole designation of gatekeepers and do agree Apple is a closed ecosystem. What I don't understand are the implementation details and I always hear "it is complex".

Let's stick with earbuds or watches, where the argument (e.g. Garmin) is that they can't create functionally equal devices to AirPod / Apple Watch, because not all APIs are open. I understand this point, since yes, Apple has a lot of internal implementation that only Apple can use for their devices. What I don't understand is the EU's standpoint of "just opening it up(!)". Let's say Apple would allow everyone to use all APIs to communicate with their AirPods/Apple Watches. Assume everything is open now - wouldn't that create chaos?

Another vendor could implement everything Apple does and release similar AirPods or Watch with whatever hardware quality - but what happens when Apple changes their internal implementation? Changes the implementation every week, because they optimize for THEIR devices. There is no official ISO standard, Bluetooth standard or whatever standard they are adhering to, they would just open up their implementation. I assume the EU would then say "this is against the spirit of the DMA, do not change your implementation so often", but this would seem like a very long cat and mouse game (it already is a very long process).

Why doesn't the EU define some interoperability requirements that gatekeepers need to adhere to in the EU market? This would make it easier for everyone. I don't get why it always is just the talk about "open it up" - that would be a start in terms of interoperability, no doubt, but that isn't the solution is it?

Re: Apple vs the Law

#112
post #100
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens in the confines of legal (EU, California, ...) institutions and courts with the occasional boring news reporting the average consumer doesn't read, like this article. It's clearly a win for Apple.

More people are getting annoyed with Apple over these issues, and they are bleeding into the mainstream media more frequently. I have a few die hard Apple friends (Non-professionals) that have recently got so frustrated with being pushed into corners that they have given up the fruity ecosystem altogether. In no way am I suggesting that Apple are on the way out, but they have definitely started to turn the same corne…

“Challenging underdog” isn’t a term I’d have applied to Apple since the early days of the iPhone. They’ve been very big and very “big business” for a long time now, and I’ve called myself an Apple fan since the 1990s. They are a very different company today (mostly due to means; they’ve always had the ambition).

Re: Apple vs the Law

#113

I basically stopped buying "apps" almost a decade ago when Apple unceremoniously removed an app i paid for with no refund because the in app browser defaulted to a certain website. Btw I have always hated their "app" branding. But the benefit of it, at least for me, is it's a strong reminder that it's a childish analog to an application. The only exception to this is I bought the game, Vampire Survivors, no wait. It…

I also find editing on an iPhone to be an exercise in futility. Is it no longer possible to place a cursor in the middle of a word? I end up having to go to a word boundary and erase from there and retype everything.

The keyboard touch areas also seem offset from Android and I end up one row off too much of the time.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s extremely complex. I’m not debating whether they should comply - they should. But it’s gonna cost them years of engineering effort, and maintenance far into the future. See, for example, BrowserEngineKit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/browserenginekit They needed to engineer, maintain, document and support a whole class of APIs so that third parties can create their own competitive browser engines (th…

Or, they could just let their pocket computers run the software users download and install, like every single other computer ever made and sold, rather than special-case engineer padded cells for every use-case, application class, or bit of interoperability.

An iPhone isn’t a pocket computer. It needs to be really secure because someone gaining full access to it through a badly written browser would cost you your life savings if not your life for some.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#115

I basically stopped buying "apps" almost a decade ago when Apple unceremoniously removed an app i paid for with no refund because the in app browser defaulted to a certain website. Btw I have always hated their "app" branding. But the benefit of it, at least for me, is it's a strong reminder that it's a childish analog to an application. The only exception to this is I bought the game, Vampire Survivors, no wait. It…

I also find editing on an iPhone to be an exercise in futility. Is it no longer possible to place a cursor in the middle of a word? I end up having to go to a word boundary and erase from there and retype everything. The keyboard touch areas also seem offset from Android and I end up one row off too much of the time.

Yes, the UI is so overloaded you can never tell what it's going to do. It might do two or three totally different things. Obviously you want to have the magnifying glass with a cursor. But then the cursor might just decide to jump to the end of the word. Sometimes it's impossible to get the cursor in front of the first letter if the UI is cramped. Maybe it will copy the text into a floating clipboard if your finger drifts a few pixels south. Maybe it will bring up a context menu? If you're using Safari, maybe it won't even let you select any text at all. Then you can take a screenshot and select text from an image to work around that.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#116
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB…

> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "U…

Yes. As someone who has worked with 100+ funded start-ups, roughly 85 in USA and 15 in EU - the EU ones have such a harder, trudging climb due to regulations.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#117

As a European, I have to say I am generally impressed with the EU in these cases. I'm from a country that's rich and capable, but with a GDP a fraction of Apple's market cap. There is no chance that national laws and entities would be sufficient to protect my consumer rights from corporations this size. The EU is fundamentally a centre-right, liberalist, pro-business coalition, but what that means is that it is pro-c…

I would argue the opposite: It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply. Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and…

> It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply.

The DMA (that this article is about) applies to gatekeepers (massive companies like big tech), not mom and pop startups

Re: Apple vs the Law

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, they could just let their pocket computers run the software users download and install, like every single other computer ever made and sold, rather than special-case engineer padded cells for every use-case, application class, or bit of interoperability.

An iPhone isn’t a pocket computer. It needs to be really secure because someone gaining full access to it through a badly written browser would cost you your life savings if not your life for some.

How and why is that somehow fundamentally different from someone gaining complete access to your computer, which allows you to run anything freely? Both are your personal devices that store your sensitive personal information.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#119
post #104
post #57

I think at this point we should change the law so that Gatekeepers aren't just required to enable competition, but are somehow forced to actually support competition. I'm not sure how we could enforce that, but maybe the law could stipulate that a certain minimum percentage of users must use 3rd party app stores, or use web apps. They should pay a fine if less than say 5% of apps are distributed outside the app store…

First they have to enable competition, you're saying they have to support it but seemingly you want to enforce it. Where does it stop? Should Apple just pay out a part of their profits to their competitors? If a competitor wants market share they have to build a better service. Forcing users to go with a bad deal gets the incentives all wrong and is actually bad for consumer choice.

> Forcing users to go with a bad deal gets the incentives all wrong and is actually bad for consumer choice.

Nice bad faith strawman, where'd you buy it ?

Apple is trying to have its cake and eat it too, selling off their devices as general computing devices and opening it partly to external developers, taking away a massive portion of profits and threatening them when it's not advantageous to them. The entire point is that you _cannot_ build a better service because Apple is blocking you.

Sony isn't getting this treatment for the PS5, despite qualifying well for being a gatekeeper, because there's no pretenses of being an open market.

If Apple wants out of this, then let them close down the App Store.

Re: Apple vs the Law

#120
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB…

> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "U…

SAP, Spotify, Sitecore, Roche, Airbus, CERN (the ecosystem powers its research), CodePlay, SN Systems, BAYER, Roche,....
Post reply on HN