Massive announcement.
Basically 'Separation of Platform and Apps', cleaving a wedge between layers of the value chain.
EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
171–180 of 930 posts
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's greed (in maintaining the egregious 30% commission for so long) is going to undermine their entire ecosystem. If Apple moved voluntarily to 10% or 15% for all, there never would have been the industry pressure for this sort of regulation. The EU would have been better to just mandate a maximum % commission for all digital marketplaces above a certain level of revenue. This new solution will get poked full of…
If iPhones had different app stores with 15% fees, then consumers would decide. I think the real issue here is consumers are gona get hyper confused and it wont be a better experience for anyone. Every single app creator out there will now want their own "app store" and it's going to be a mess. 30% fee initially to capture that market was what our company factored in and grew exponentially with. A 15% fee is nothing…
More likely, some apps will simply bypass the whole app store concept entirely. There are a lot of downsides to requiring every app install be intermediated by a third party, especially for internal or very niche apps where the app store isn't really adding any value because the provider is a trusted/known brand to the customer already (e.g. they may have a negotiated contract).
For consumer apps, there doesn't seem to be much appetite to do this on Android at least, though Telegram can be installed outside of app stores. It rolls its own update system and that seems to work fine.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
This actually opens a race to be the best mobile browser, which might well see new entrants. As people increasingly use their mobiles as primary devices, they are more likely to move to a new browser on mobile platforms and then adapt their desktops to that choice, rather than the other way around as they did in the past. Current mobile browsers have historical baggage that a new entrant would not need to carry.
> 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”.
That's self-defeatist. You mentioned IE downthread; IE is not the dominant browser anymore, and the reason for that is not just that MS stagnated, but that it was challenged vigorously by competitors that exploited new opportunities better. This is one such opportunity.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#174In case someone here knows but how is it even possible that EU can fine companies based on the whole world "turnover" (which I might incorrectly presume meaning profits) when their power is restricted to the EU space. Re: this: > The DMA says that gatekeepers who ignore the rules will face fines of up to 10 percent of the company's total worldwide annual turnover, or 20 percent in the event of repeated infringements,…
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Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#175There's several very good provisions in this legislation (3rd party payment processors, non-preferential treatment for 1st party apps), there are several that have a mix of upsides and downsides (sideloading is one--I personally like knowing that Facebook can't ask people to sideload some privacy destroying crap on iOS).
Then there's:
- Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those belonging to a gatekeeper. This includes making messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable with third-party services upon request.
- Give developers access to any hardware feature, such as "near-field communication technology, secure elements and processors, authentication mechanisms, and the software used to control those technologies."
Apps will use near-field communication technology and other mechanisms to track us (consider how many device related APIs have restrictions in web browsers for just this reason), and I think it's credible that the interoperability requirements are going to be used to smash end-to-end encrypted messaging. You can have a decentralized end to end encrypted protocol. Can you retrofit every existing messaging service to use it in the short-term? Probably not.
As an end user, the things that give developers maximum freedom are not necessarily the things that let me use my device with maximum freedom. I support people who want a FOSS device that is in no way locked down. I just don't want that, because I don't want to play systems administrator for an always on tracker in my pocket.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
How could it make more financial sense to withdraw? As long as Apple keeps selling iPhones, there's still profit to be made, App Store be damned.
It doesn't. The parent premise - that Apple is going to be severely harmed financially by any of this - is something far beyond silly. Apple will barely see a dent from it. Their profit juggernaut will keep rolling on almost exactly the same. The parent comment in question - "and eat pretty heavily into their revenues" - is confusing their personal projected wishful thinking (obviously desperately wanting big tech to…
Apple clearly does have serious competitive threats to what they do, it doesn't even have majority market share in the EU. But it also won't threaten their revenues much. On platforms where users and developers do have a choice from day one (Android), the app store is sufficiently useful that most devs do choose to stick with it. It seems unlikely that Apple can't make the app store competitive on its own terms.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#177I generally believe Apple, Google and others should be able to profit from creating some of the most useful, innovative and technically challenging products in human history (remember multi touch was not an affordable thing before Apple). But, 15 years (since original iPhone) is about enough to reward the innovation. Beyond that point, it is the role of government to open up platforms to enable the next generation of…
> If I go to a clinic, they ask me to side load an app while I’m sick, and that app has no real privacy protections…
That behavior should also be regulated, because the app is collecting medical information.
I'd much rather the government regulate this than some self-interested tech company which promotes privacy if and when it's financially expedient for them.
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#178Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#179Like so often with new laws, I think a more general one would have been better.
Why is it about apps, app stores, developers, voice assistants and all that specific stuff?
In my opinion, it should just have been this: A company is not allowed to artificially restrict what users can do with the products they bought.
Then it would also not be allowed to restrict people from installing alternative operating systems on the hardware they bought.
Linux on an iPad! How nice would that be!
Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Never underestimate the creative genius of Apple. They will come up with new solutions to keep their walled garden. "Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet" I bet this is going to be a horrible user experience. "Are you really sure?", "Apple takes no responsibility not warranty" whatsoever. What sound usually easy on paper...
Definitely -- I can imagine them making it some kind of faustian bargain, where in exchange for enabling sideloading, you void your warranty, never get any software updates again, can't connect to any Apple online services whatsoever, etc.
That would violate the EU legislation as currently written.