EU regulation just ruins tech in my opinion.
GDPR was great in principle but all we ended up with was annoying cookie pop ups.
Apple did a much better job with App Tracking Privacy.
And not, EU so regulating that to make it worse
EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
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Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#122This is huge. Forcing Apple to allow app side-loading, third-party payments, etc is going to wrest away control of the iOS ecosystem (and eat pretty heavily into their revenues [1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/apple-implies-it-generated-r... I hope some of these regulations spill over into the U.S. and the rest of the world.
I wonder if it would make more financial sense for Apple to withdraw from EU market, rather than complying. The numbers for 2021 are pretty much in line: $89B - Apple sales in Europe (including some non-EU countries, most notably UK) $85B - Apple AppStore revenue worldwide. The question is: which one has more potential for growth.
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Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#123I think there are good intentions behind it, but it also misses the mark by targeting big tech specifically. The good that could have come of it, is a sort of open sourcing of tech companies... but of course none of that is going to happen. Yet we have standards; like USB-C which are a good thing. Question is who should enforce creating more standards (to address eg the interoperability of the messaging apps cited in…
Unfortunately Apple, although creating technically excellent products[0] is a very bad player as far as the environment is concerned. In particular, they insistence on thinness and related design choices (gluing everything together) makes the shelf life of their products relatively short. This is wrong no matter how you look at it. I have no problem with paying premium, I have a problem with the fact that my MacBook…
Hmm, I mean I wish we'd still be in the 1990's with user-replaceable RAM, batteries, CPUs/GPUs and all, but I don't know that Apple specifically is a "very bad" player in terms of longevity and sustainability. The updates you get on iOS devices for years on end (up to 10!) is notably unheard of in Android land. In fact, I'm using my original iPad Mini (from 2013 or so) still without probs, and have installed games on it as recently as a couple months ago; and so do I run a four year old iPhone 6s that's doing just fine with up-to-date essential apps for banking, auth, CoVid contract tracing (until a couple of months ago when we still needed those), etc. Likewise, Apple notebooks have way better value retention/resale value, not to speak of battery power, display and overall quality. Whereas the Dell and Lenovo (Thinkpad, Latitude/Precision so comparable in price) notebooks I've received recently for customer project work have OOTB battery and other failures (I'm actually on my third or fourth Dell/Lenovo notebook within a little over half a year), to the point that I'm refusing to buy PC hardware as it is because it's just laughably last-gen compared to Apple, and sometimes not even that, it's not even funny anmore.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
And now you'll be able to choose WHILE still keep using iOS which is much better for you as a consumer. This being bad for "regular people" is typical monopolistic corporate scaremongering. Apple has proven that they're more than capable of providing secure devices that provide choice with their MacBook series.
Kind of. So the primary issue is that Apple collectively bargains on behalf of customers against developers. So if you take something like privacy rights, Apple can say "hey, we've got all of these users and if you want to participate in the ecosystem you have to not track their data" - as an example. Now what happens is that companies like Facebook and others who really want to get your data without that pesky Apple…
> Facebook and others to start such stores that don't respect privacy rights
This is trotted out every time, but these doomsaying scenarios always miss out that this is far harder to achieve than it seems, from a product and business perspective. They can build it, but consumers are unlikely to come.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#125Sounds like a security nightmare. The reason I like my iPhone is because it’s a walled garden. Things just work. This regulation hampers this
Not really. It can still be a walled garden if there is an opt out option, so you can still be able to be inside it but with the option to go out of it and be able to sideload/use different app stores. Also the Apple app store will definitely still be the main source as people usually don't switch that easily for almost no benefit.
No one will force you use a different app store as well.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#126I really hope Sony and Nintendo are classified as gatekeepers as well because this > Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet. would be huge for Playstation and Switch owners.
While I want this to be true, consoles only exist because of game revenue. Not sure a $2000 PS5 is as appealing
The PS5 hardware is already profitable (well, the more expensive one at least). Well, it was before the inflation ramped up at least. But still, even if sideloading was possible on the PS5, PlayStation Store revenue would not dip down to nothingness.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/ps5-turning-profit-sony...
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind of. So the primary issue is that Apple collectively bargains on behalf of customers against developers. So if you take something like privacy rights, Apple can say "hey, we've got all of these users and if you want to participate in the ecosystem you have to not track their data" - as an example. Now what happens is that companies like Facebook and others who really want to get your data without that pesky Apple…
Apple has completely forgotten their privacy bargains in China when their profits were threatened. They've also special-cased their own Ad data collection (a business that's growing in revenue) to be opt-out. So your trust in Apple collectively bargaining in your interest is misplaced because they ALREADY haven't proven themselves to be trustworthy (and they repeatedly lied and misled in their marketing and court hea…
> Apple has completely forgotten their privacy bargains in China when their profits were threatened.
Couple of things here. First, I live in America so I don't really care and apparently the Chinese people for whatever reason want to live in that privacy hellscape. Second, Apple unfortunately (like many corporations) is not in a position to dictate privacy regulations to the Chinese government. The interactions here, frankly, are complicated so I'm not really buying this as a valid criticism w.r.t the App Store. If you really want to try and take a moral high ground here, well, let me know when the EU stops supporting genocide in Xinjiang. I'll wait.
(but it's complicated, so let's not sling mud here alright?)
> They've also special-cased their own Ad data collection (a business that's growing in revenue) to be opt-out.
Yes, and I don't like this. It's something I agree with criticizing Apple for.
Similarly: "They're an unaccountable and unelected corporation, not a government"
Yes. And? They're ahead of government regulation here (in many instances and in many countries). You're framing this as if my choices are an unelected corporation and a government, but we're just switching between one unelected corporation (Apple) and others (Facebook, et al).
> I honestly don't understand your penchant to cross your fingers and hope a for-profit corporation will protect you over actually ensuring they do via privacy legislation.
We are not talking about GDPR or "socialism" or whatever. We're talking about regulating Apple so that other mega corporations can create their own app stores on iOS and then do whatever they want. You're just wrestling control away from one mega corporation that ostensibly has some sort of values that align with the interest of the public and giving it to other mega corporations that, as far as I can tell, don't.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This actually opens a race to be the best mobile browser, which might well see new entrants. Hahhahahhahahahaha. We will end up with chrome. And developers targeting chrome and safari users being left out because “works best in chrome for my text based website that doesn’t do anything safari can’t do”.
Sounds like Apple needs to work harder to make Safari into a better mobile browser, if you're so sure that Chrome would win.
There’s other browsers on android. No one uses them.
Safari is great. It works. No issues. But developers will do what they did to ie. develop for chrome and shove a banner up blocking safari.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#129Happy that I might be able to install something else than Safari. I want the Gecko engine on iOS. Sad that being in UK probably means we'll ignore it because "Brexit." I got a text the other day telling me that, since we've left the EU, roaming charges are back. Hurray! Without making this about politics, this is a great step forward. Still unsure how Apple & co. will make their proprietary video and messaging platfo…
> Still unsure how Apple & co. will make their proprietary video and messaging platforms "interoperable". I doubt they'll be writing an RFC any time soon. I'd be pretty happy if I could integrate iMessage and Signal together, since I hate the fact that iMessage is the only messaging platform with a native macOS app.
What's Signal on Mac, Electron?
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#130I really hope Sony and Nintendo are classified as gatekeepers as well because this > Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet. would be huge for Playstation and Switch owners.
While I want this to be true, consoles only exist because of game revenue. Not sure a $2000 PS5 is as appealing
All new consoles are sold with profit or breaking even so I don't know where this assertion even comes from.
Not to mention that they happily double dip by taxing for games, charging online service subscriptions and getting extra revenue via online stores.