31–40 of 141 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe companies that break eu/local rules could respect the law
Hard to respect vague laws. Apple can't read the regulators' minds and figure out their interpretations, or instantly pivot when regulators change their minds.
the 'Guardia di Finanza' has a long standing tradition of trying to extort money without regards to actual laws. its not long ago that they told all companies 'if you pay X% more than your tax report says you own then we won't destroy your company'. more recently they went after the Agnelli family trying to extort money without having an actual case.
its not the rule of law, its simply Might makes Right or modern robber knights...
Is certainly a leverage in Apple’s third-party research.
I'm so glad they're protecting us from Apple (checking document) making it too hard to collect personal data for advertising. Thanks, Italy
It really depends if apple is making it hard to collect data that apple itself can collect with blanket permissions from users. In that case yes, apple is abusing its dominant position and is competing unfairly with other companies. And they must be fined for that. Apple does advertising too: https://ads.apple.com
no year goes by without Italy imposing random >100m€ fines for 2-3 american tech companies. whenever they need money, they just hit another one without care whether actual laws were violated. the amount they take has no correlation to what has been blamed, only to how much the companies can afford to pay without threatening to leave the country. the 'Guardia di Finanza' has a long standing tradition of trying to exto…
> privacy rules imposed by Apple for iOS devices, as of April 2021, on third-party developers of apps distributed through the App Store. In particular, third-party app developers are required to obtain specific consent for the collection and linking of data for advertising purposes through Apple’s ATT prompt Wait, so they are punishing Apple because Apple makes it harder to spy on users. What happens if Apple just ex…
No, they are punishing because the ATT pop-up is not enough to comply with privacy rules, requiring 3rd party apps to have a secondary pop-up to be compliant (which Apple's own apps wouldn't need since they don't use ATT). So it's more that Apple's ATT is not compliant with stricter privacy rules, not the opposite...
Meanwhile ATT blocks access to IDFA (instead of making it a pinky promise), and if apps were honest and were denied ATT it should disable other tracking too. The user has already indicated lack of consent.
I don't download any apps anymore, so not very informed on the state of alternative app stores in EU. I decided to Google where I can find those. One of the first links is leading to MacPaw's website. It's a company with questionable ethics and business practices that tries to sell you "antivirus" and "decluttering" app. So I'll pass. But are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now? Something that's used by mo…
Yikes, Google results are bad these days! They seem to focus on Mac applications, not iOS app store alternatives.
> But are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now?
Yes, the main one I am familiar with is AltStore: https://altstore.io
However, according to Apple's docs, they only allow alternative app stores in the EU and Japan, so you have to be using an iOS account with the region set to one of those two places and be physically located there in order to install the app store. Not something that's easy to experiment with for people in the USA to see how the other half lives.
> Or is EU just trying to milk rich USA tech giants (I think I know the answer).
I don't really see an angle for the EU to do much milking here. Actually I think the AltStore founders are Americans? So they seem to be reaping the benefits of EU and Japanese legislation, remotely.
This looks like it's targeted at the relationship between Apple and Italian developers. I guess this means Apple could also comply by kicking Italian developers out of the iOS developer program?
Unlikely because services in the EU have to be offered without barriers to everyone across all member states.