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EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

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Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#111

Post by spullara »

andersa wrote: post #62
spullara wrote: post #50

I for one look forward to there being a franken iphone in EU covered with ads and malware. Apple should give them exactly what they want. Every major software company will have their own app store for their apps. It will be glorius!

Protections against malware are the job of the operating system not an app store. And I don't understand the point about ads. The vast majority of apps currently available on the app store is already plastered with ads?

Every app asking for every possible access to your stuff no matter if it needs it or not is currently protected against by the app store, not the OS.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#112

Post by andersa »

organsnyder wrote: post #70

I was at [IAPP Global Privacy Summit]( https://iapp.org/conference/global-privacy-summit/ ) 2022, where Tim Cook gave a keynote. He started with highlighting all of the ways Apple protects its users privacy (many of which are great, and the reason I use Apple products!), but then he pivoted to make the case that Apple being forced to allow rival app stores would compromise their ability to protect users' privacy. Thi…

It's just BS. Privacy and security are OS functions, not part of an app store. iOS has a good base here already - certainly much better than windows where every app can just arbitrarily read every file on the computer...

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#113

Post by theshrike79 »

organsnyder wrote: post #70

I was at [IAPP Global Privacy Summit]( https://iapp.org/conference/global-privacy-summit/ ) 2022, where Tim Cook gave a keynote. He started with highlighting all of the ways Apple protects its users privacy (many of which are great, and the reason I use Apple products!), but then he pivoted to make the case that Apple being forced to allow rival app stores would compromise their ability to protect users' privacy. Thi…

It's like taking a rabid badger as a roommate.

You can in theory keep it cornered in its own room (sandbox), but there's no way to be 100% sure it'll stay there. You can be absolutely sure that it will never stop trying to get out.

App Store apps can be trusted to stick to a sandbox because they are vetted to a standard before being allowed there.

There's no reason for Epic-F-Droid-Store have their applications adhere to any kind of standards enforced by Apple. They can do whatever shitty manipulative tricks they want to try to escape any OS level sandboxing Apple tries to build.

Doubly so for 3rd party browsers. A browser has a huge attack surface and can also run code (javascript and WASM at the least). Keeping it secure and sandboxed is not a trivial thing.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#114

Post by spullara »

hightrix wrote: post #89
colonwqbang wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea that without a tightly controlled monopoly enforced by digital locks, the world will immediately devolve into chaos. On my phone I can install proprietary apps from Google's store, or open source apps from F-droid. What's wrong with having choice?

I agree that having a choice is absolutely important. I want to have a choice of a closed ecosystem, like Apple. Can we not have the option between open (Android) and closed (Apple)?

Apple is very far from a monopoly in EU:

In the first quarter of 2023, Apple obtained 26 percent of the European smartphone market based on shipments. Historically have Apple's sales been very cyclical, peaking in the fourth quarter each year.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#115

Post by threeseed »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #104
yreg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe companies like Meta could afford to leave the Apple App Store and distribute apps through their own app store only. Perhaps you might say that would be fair, but it is a world that suits me less than the current one.

So why is that not happening for android? You don't have to come up with hypothetical scenarios if you already have a real life example to look at.

Because there's no point as they need their apps to be cross platform and so Apple is setting a baseline for what behaviour is allowed.

But once Meta, Epic etc can run their own stores on both iOS and Android they will absolutely move their apps to them. Epic has already said how important this is to be able to implement their metaverse strategy.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#116

Post by arp242 »

johnzim wrote: post #61
olliej wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it will be so great when web developers can just force everyone to use chrome.

The inexplicable need to make the browser a second OS with worse everything boggles my mind. Especially on mobile devices which prize battery life. It won't give users choice because we as an industry have again and again just chosen what's easiest for us instead of best for the customer. We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it because of the battery and performance issues. This forum spe…

> We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it because of the battery and performance issues.

Eh, it was very much on the way out already, and mostly used for things which didn't have brilliant alternatives at the time (e.g. videos) and sites like YouTube had been experimenting with "HTML5 video". Few people really liked Flash (outside of usage for games, which was and remains a valid use case IMO), but it was just used because browsers just didn't support a lot of things, and once HTML5 took off Flash usage dropped. HTML5 killed off Flash.

This is why Apple could get away with just not supporting Flash, which certainly sped up this pre-existing trend, but the idea that "Apple killed off Flash" is a serious misreading of history.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#117

Post by theshrike79 »

smoldesu wrote: post #82
johnzim wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inexplicable need to make the browser a second OS with worse everything boggles my mind. Especially on mobile devices which prize battery life. It won't give users choice because we as an industry have again and again just chosen what's easiest for us instead of best for the customer. We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it because of the battery and performance issues. This forum spe…

> We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it I mean, that's hyperbole. Even in a flash-dominated web, there was still tons of non-flash technology being developed and distributed. In 2023 it would definitely be obsoleted, if for no reason other than Adobe having no incentive to keep it around. Apple's decision feels tangential relative to the progress of internet bandwidth, delivery technolo…

It would most definitely still be alive. Source: I worked for a company whose web UI was 100% Flash/Shockwave.

If Steve Jobs hadn't publicly come against Flash and by extension forced the hand of everyone else, I'm pretty sure they'd still be using Flash just because change is hard.

The company went so far as to ship a specific browser to customers that could still run Flash instead of spending resources to rewrite the crappy UI =)

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#118

Post by yreg »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #100
yreg wrote: post #73

My opinion won't be popular. I think it is nice to have a choice of a walled off platform. If I wanted a "more open" platform, I would get an Android phone. There are plenty of amazing Android phones. I choose the tradeoff of Apple's curation. Yes, I cannot run arbitrary software and sometimes it is a disadvantage. Yes, I don't agree with all of the App Store rules all of the time. Yes, I don't think the App Store re…

False dichotomy. Having a curated store \neq Having only one store. Also, that misses all the other areas pointed out: "Be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers." > But that policy should then also apply to PlayStation, X-box, Tesla infotainment, etc. Why? That only applies to "gatekeepers". So you…

>False dichotomy.

No it's not. Currently all the apps that want to be available on Apple's platform have to submit to Apple's rules. If alternative app stores are allowed, they won't have to do that. As a consumer I like the current state of matters more.

>Also, that misses all the other areas

I'm reacting only to the App Store part. I'm all for opening electronic wallet or allowing browser engines into App Store. Those are off topic in this subthread.

>Why? That only applies to "gatekeepers".

I don't see how PS/Xbox/Tesla are any less of a gatekeeper than Apple.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#119

Post by ribosometronome »

andersa wrote: post #83
robertlagrant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this going to try and turn iPhones into general purpose computing devices? Currently they're much more locked down than that.

People already use their phones for everything in our modern society, so they have simply declared them to be that, regardless of what Apple thinks about it. Even if I'd personally like it, I don't think the same argument makes much sense for a PS5 - when have you last used it to order groceries or new furniture? Apple would love to get a cut of those purchases, by the way. Starting by dealing with the devices that h…

>when have you last used it to order groceries or new furniture? Apple would love to get a cut of those purchases, by the way.

You can, though. There's no particularly convenient way to do most of those things, but that's largely because of manufacturer limitations. Nothing stopping you from using the browser on your Switch to go do instacart.com, tho.

>Starting by dealing with the devices that have the highest impact on the largest number of people

Why would this need to be addressed so singularly? Is that how the EU approaches most problems? It seems pretty sensible that they'd just regulate computing devices to allow for this sort of thing and then be able to pretty easily bring into compliance any who don't. Isn't that more or less what they did with the GDPR? It seems like regulating this would be even easier as non-compliance would be entirely visible to the consumer.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#120

Post by theshrike79 »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #109
larme wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesser of two evils principle maybe? I defend apple in this one appstore topic not because I think apple is good, but just better than google and facebook. Of course the longterm solution is to get better legalization on privacy protection etc. But before that, I really prefer apple as a proxy between me and google/facebook/etc.

If you like Apple's policies, just don't sideload and install everything from their official AppStore. Nothing will change for you then. You can do it on MacBooks as well.

When this goes through, you can be 100% sure there will be a Meta-only iOS store along with a Google iOS store and all their apps will move there.

After that if you want to use apps to access any Google or Meta service, you'll need to get it from their store - that doesn't have any pesky limitations on user profiling or stupid guidelines for privacy.

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