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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

#141

Post by rstuart4133 »

tpmoney wrote: post #138
rstuart4133 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many years will it be before audio on the Linux OS doesn’t suck? Bad example. It's a bad example because in order to achieve that Linux has has many, many sound API's over the years. Most of them interacted in bad ways. Often the new boy on the block had emulate all the previous ones to have a hope of being adopted. If a great, reliable sound system depended on the ability to iterate on API's Linux's should hav…

> Often the new boy on the block had emulate all the previous ones to have a hope of being adopted. > ... > Once it's out there you can't change the API without breaking all the deployments. Yes, a successful standard means it's been widely deployed, but it doesn't cause it. Yes, that was the point. A public API in use by its very nature will have negative impacts on future development of that API. Or as I put it in…

> Yes, that was the point. A public API in use by its very nature will have negative impacts on future development of that API.

And my point was I don't agree. It's not that it's public. It's that it's in use.

> They can, all they have to do is push out an update for those watches.

An update they can't be sure every watch has done. The usual solution is to that situation is to plan for it from day 1, design the watches so the very first ones you release can detect that's happened, and when it has issue an error message like "sorry, you'll have to update your watch to continue". Compare to: you design an API, as part of the design it queries what version the servers support, and issues a message like "your new end point doesn't support me any more, you need to upgrade something". Sounds very similar, doesn't it?

Example: ssh will stop running if your old client connects to a new server. It's a public API.

Example: SSL/TLS has moved through multiple incompatible versions. It's a very public API.

So apparently the API being public didn't stop transitioning to new, incompatible versions when the need arose. What will stop it is not designing your API with upgrades in mind. If you don't do that, you will end up in a world of pain regardless of whether the API is public or not.

You say it slows things down, but that's not necessarily correct either. Apple can continue to update it's API's and devices at any rate it pleases. If the 3rd party devices don't updates fast enough to follow, well that's their problem.

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

#142

Post by tpmoney »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #141
tpmoney wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often the new boy on the block had emulate all the previous ones to have a hope of being adopted. > ... > Once it's out there you can't change the API without breaking all the deployments. Yes, a successful standard means it's been widely deployed, but it doesn't cause it. Yes, that was the point. A public API in use by its very nature will have negative impacts on future development of that API. Or as I put it in…

> Yes, that was the point. A public API in use by its very nature will have negative impacts on future development of that API. And my point was I don't agree. It's not that it's public. It's that it's in use. > They can, all they have to do is push out an update for those watches. An update they can't be sure every watch has done. The usual solution is to that situation is to plan for it from day 1, design the watch…

> It's not that it's public. It's that it's in use.

And an API that isn't public can have its use restricted to a controlled set of environments and places, which inherently makes it easier to update.

> Apple can continue to update it's API's and devices at any rate it pleases. If the 3rd party devices don't updates fast enough to follow, well that's their problem.

Until the EU decides that a public API that changes without warning and "arbitrarily" to suit Apple's needs is also anti-competitive. An argument that would easily be made the first time Apple shipped an update to the API that broke a bunch of third party devices even while their own devices continued to work fine because they received an update at the same time, or even early in preparation.

Again, my argument is not that it is impossible to make a public API or to transition that API. My argument is that a public API by its very nature often implies a slower pace of change. Even in your examples, SSL and TLS upgrades often happen over many years, with deprecated older versions being supported along side the current version for a while.

In fact, TLS is a great example of this, where TLS 1.1 had fixed the vulnerabilities that made the BEAST attacks possible, and yet in 2011, when BEAST was discovered, it was still a problem because in 5 years, TLS1.1 still hadn't had a lot of adoption. Or consider that TLS 1.3 has been out since 2018, and yet I can still connect to this very site using TLS 1.1 with weak encryption keys. In fact, if I change firefox to require TLS 1.3, I can't even connect to this site. Or consider further that initial TLS 1.3 rollout was hampered by middle layers that had implemented the spec badly (https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-tls-1-3-isnt-in-browsers-yet...).

Again these are not insurmountable problems, but they are problems inherent with a public API or protocol that multiple vendors are implementing, and problems that Apple either does not have to deal with, or deals with on a much smaller scale with their private internal APIs and therefore can move faster when iterating on those APIs.

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

#143

Post by kennysoona »

tpmoney wrote: post #139
kennysoona wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still spent weeks this year trying to sort out what magic combination of alsa, and pipewire and pulse-audio and wireplumber setting, configs and launch timings would get HDMI audio to not come up muted on a mini PC with integrated Radeon graphics in Ubuntu. This sounds very much like an edge case. Why didn't you use Windows or MacOS on the mini PC instead? Was it because you were unable to do so? > Or how about t…

>This sounds very much like an edge case. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=linux%20radeon%20audio... > Why didn't you use Windows or MacOS on the mini PC instead? Was it because you were unable to do so? Because despite what you might assume from reading what I've written here today, I'm not against or opposed to open source and open protocol stuff. Everything I personally write I release open source. I push my…

> https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=linux%20radeon%20audio...

This supports that it seems to be an edge case.

> Because despite what you might assume from reading what I've written here today, I'm not against or opposed to open source and open protocol stuff.

And the point of asking what I did was to point out maybe you wouldn't be able to get as far as you did without linux; certainly macos wasn't an option, right? Not a modern version at least. Why criticize an area linux is falling short when you're preferred OS isn't even an option? It just doesn't make sense in this context.

> And so as I've asked before in other places, what monopoly are they regulating here?

Are you the same type of person who would argue never had a monopoly because Apple and Netscape were available?

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

#144

Post by mrtksn »

makeitdouble wrote: post #136
mrtksn wrote: post #56

EU is still surprisingly naive and open for business. After TikTok getting banned(postponed for now) in US for national security reasons, and after US cutting military support and intelligence in Ukraine I was expecting for things to start rolling by now. They already start doing things on the military side of things with restricting the military equipment purchases to EU only with exceptions granted on the basis tha…

> If USA decides to side with Russia on the invasion of Europe USA is still part of the NATO, siding with Russia while it hits any of the NATO member will be a problem beyond shutting down EU telecommunications. Now if your question is whether the EU can sustain an open war with the US and Russia simultaneously, I honestly don't think so, irrelevant to whether Apple/Google sabotage their EU infra or not. I naively th…

Although has some successful interventions, USA wasn't able to win a war since almost a century and in the last one people were falling from the planes when USA was trying to ran away. Russia wasn't able to defeat its neighbor, had to get help from DPRK, China to sustain parts of invasion and get help from the USA to expel invasion on its own territory. Although Israel was able to level a city in its proximity with tens of billions of US weapons, they still weren't able to capture it. Yemen, a country with less than 500$ per capita GDP is able to withstand US attacks and still block marine traffic by launching attacks.

The moral of the story is, if people don't feel like getting invaded you actually can't. There are a very few places that were successfully invaded, like Northern Cyprus or Crimea but those already had significant ethnic population with ties to the invaders.

Obviously it's very damaging and obviously some powers attempt to invade but I don't think that there's a credible case to just give up. Also, that argument is a good example of why EU should control its own communications.

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

#145

Post by makeitdouble »

mrtksn wrote: post #144
makeitdouble wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If USA decides to side with Russia on the invasion of Europe USA is still part of the NATO, siding with Russia while it hits any of the NATO member will be a problem beyond shutting down EU telecommunications. Now if your question is whether the EU can sustain an open war with the US and Russia simultaneously, I honestly don't think so, irrelevant to whether Apple/Google sabotage their EU infra or not. I naively th…

Although has some successful interventions, USA wasn't able to win a war since almost a century and in the last one people were falling from the planes when USA was trying to ran away. Russia wasn't able to defeat its neighbor, had to get help from DPRK, China to sustain parts of invasion and get help from the USA to expel invasion on its own territory. Although Israel was able to level a city in its proximity with t…

In the saddest possible way, I think the US learned the lesson and won't engage in a classical on the ground warfare against a country like France. To start, France is a nuke holder with bases around the world, so the stakes are that much higher. And as you point out it already has an history of resistance and fighting to the bitter end.

So the only option an actual war would happen is IMHO extremely violent and short-lived, Hiroshima/Nagasaki levels of impact. I don't know how that would happen, and also don't want to know, but I see it at some rhetorical probability.

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

#146

Post by jisnsm »

dismalaf wrote: post #126
jisnsm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in progressive circles. There’s life outside too.

Nah it's pretty much every circle in Europe. Macron in France and the current German government are centre right. Poland is socially way to the right. Baltics, Scandinavia, Italy, all pretty right wing. Only Putinistas support what the US is doing with Trump, which is to say, almost no one in Europe.

Macron is not right wing by absolutely any sane definition of the concept. Can’t say anything about the others.

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

#147

Post by troupo »

xvokcarts wrote: post #124
troupo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer to "what's best for others" should not be "that which we want for ourselves" regardless of expertise. Do unto others what you would do unto yourself and all that. On top of that, a lot of people want interoperability, they just don't know how to express it in terms that the regular highly technical divorced from reality crowd on HN understands. An anecdote: My mom has used Apple's Books it since it first…

> Do unto others what you would do unto yourself and all that. I think that means to treat others as you’d like to be treated when you interact, not actively do to people what you’d like others to do to you. “I know what’s best for you and I’m going to make sure it happens” is a threat to most people, I’d say, and that was my point about regulation enacted by expert groups without public vote. > An anecdote: My mom h…

> “I know what’s best for you and I’m going to make sure it happens” is a threat to most people, I’d say

How is "let's make a platform more open and interoperable" a threat to anyone?

> When my mom was fed up with lack of a specific game (can’t remember which) on her iPhone, she switched to Android

"I know what's best for you: you must switch to Android". The irony.

> Only when monopoly was involved.

Word of the day: duopoly.

When there are only two platforms, and the world is very much dependent on them for a huge chunk of people's lives (to the point that banks refuse to support other platforms), it's strange to claim that a requirement for interoperability is a threat, or is forcing someone to do something, or is bad, or shouldn't be done.

Just listen to yourself. At which point did simple things like "setting default apps" or "letting apps use OS-level functionality" become "threats", "weird to force" and "government dictate"?

BTW. This is literally one of the government functions: to dictate and force common ground, interoperability, common standards etc.

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

#148

Post by troupo »

xvokcarts wrote: post #125
troupo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, a lot of people in the EU may start caring if they can no longer buy what they want just because of the vocal few, and they may stop being silent about it when it touches them. And what exactly will people not buy because of activists? Here's however, the counterexample of "companies are so good for customers why do activists try to ruin a good thing": https://mastodon.nu/@mentese@mastodon.world/1141937468…

> And what exactly will people not buy because of activists? I think that was my reply to a post about Apple exiting the EU market (completely unlikely IMO, since that would reduce profits), which may cause those unable to buy what they want to question the sensibility of specific regulation. > "companies are so good for customers why do activists try to ruin a good thing" I don't think anyone said that. But enacting…

> . But enacting regulation forcing Volvo to give you a full experience without Google Account login is just acting a step too late if you already bought it, or taking a step too far if you'd like to buy it but don't like it enough, and are now demanding they change it.

Translation: no one should demand sensible things from companies ever. Because it's either too late, or too far.

How has the world, especially the tech world, become so enamoured with corporations, walled gardens, and the idea that nothing done by any corporation can ever be challenged?

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

#149

Post by troupo »

eszed wrote: post #91
FeepingCreature wrote: post #45

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. 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.

Apple will still go out of their way to make sure these changes only stay in the EU.

E.g. changing default navigation app: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/14/dma-compliance-default-ma...

--- start quote ---

> The upcoming iOS 18.4 update introduces an option to set a default navigation app, other than Apple Maps, but unfortunately this new setting is limited to users in the EU.

This one seems kind of spiteful. I get that Apple doesn’t want to make sideloading available throughout the world just because the EU and Brazil have mandated it, but they’re going to hide the very useful maps setting in countries that don’t have a DMA?

--- end quote ---

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

#150

Post by FeepingCreature »

xvokcarts wrote: post #124
troupo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer to "what's best for others" should not be "that which we want for ourselves" regardless of expertise. Do unto others what you would do unto yourself and all that. On top of that, a lot of people want interoperability, they just don't know how to express it in terms that the regular highly technical divorced from reality crowd on HN understands. An anecdote: My mom has used Apple's Books it since it first…

> Do unto others what you would do unto yourself and all that. I think that means to treat others as you’d like to be treated when you interact, not actively do to people what you’d like others to do to you. “I know what’s best for you and I’m going to make sure it happens” is a threat to most people, I’d say, and that was my point about regulation enacted by expert groups without public vote. > An anecdote: My mom h…

"I know what's best for you and I'm going to make sure it happens" is Apple's entire ethos. So as we're going to have that anyway, I much prefer it done by elected officials.
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