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iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

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Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#221

Post by dangus »

tiffanyh wrote: post #112
isodev wrote: post #5

It’s fascinating the kind of cool features we can have when products are made to be useful, with their target user in mind. Go EU!

Or it disincentivizes creating those features, if you must give it to your competitors.

Isn't Apple currently disincentivized to make features because they don't even allow competing smartwatches to access a basic feature set on iPhone?

You're basically saying Apple would be disincentivized to innovate on the Apple Watch because Apple would need to release the underlying APIs that make those work with the phone to competing solutions. But the status quo is that competing solutions that are already better than the Apple Watch straight up aren't allowed on the platform, and the Apple Watch generally costs more than its competitors.

You are unintentionally saying that if Apple had to allow third parties to use their private APIs, that the Apple Watch would have to cost less and/or innovate more in order to convince us all to buy it instead of buying a watch from Samsung or Google.

What you are describing is a more competitive and open market where consumers benefit from lower prices and more of an incentive to innovate and justify high prices.

I would also dispute the notion that merely releasing these APIs would somehow give away all your secret sauce. Competitors still have to build the experience on top of that.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#222

Post by jonway »

ankit219 wrote: post #108
jonway wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big disagree that integrated always works better than modular writ large, but in any case maybe they could just hire this guy to do it? https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods

Its mostly true when the integrating company cares for the user experience. Which apple clearly does. The example you shared is the opposite. I am imagining a kernel today written in a manner that airpods would be able to use it to extract the max out of it. Now, it has to support 10 other third party pods, so at the minimum, kernel would be more generalized.

I guess if apple changes the way it works completely it would be different, with the kernel and such but like

Aren’t peripherals inherently modular kind of definitionally?

You should check that GitHub, it makes AirPod functionality mostly agnostic. The warts could (in some world) be mere bug reports for the manufacturer firmware team.

Personally, I think the Bluetooth standards suck a big one even recognizing how good it’s gotten and I _almost_ resent apple for not pushing this out as anither standard.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#223

Post by kmeisthax »

tt24 wrote: post #184
tkz1312 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why self proclaimed "hackers" seem to be in love with walled gardens and corporate control :)

That's the thing, you don't have to be! You are welcome to use another phone more to your liking.

I do! I've been an Android stalwart since I first got a smartphone over a decade ago.

Problem is, every year Android announces some new stupid-ass restriction or anti-feature that significantly degrades the capability of application software on the OS in the name of security. In other words, Google keeps trying to turn my Android into a shittier iPhone. It's gotten so bad that they recently floated the idea of mandatory notarization, and only marginally backed down after shittons of pushback.

Every time the EU passes a law intended to stop obviously monopolistic shit like this from happening, a certain brand of Ayn Randroid Apple fan comes out of the woodwork to decry the EU "forcing Apple to give away its technology for free". Which is absolutely bullshit, on two counts. First off, Apple sold its technology to us when we bought the phone. That's the whole deal with Apple: the OS is a bundle with the hardware. Ergo, them going to app developers and asking for a cut is double billing. Second off, and more importantly, the only reason why you even need the EU DMA is because Apple won't let you ship an app that is capable of doing what their own first-party daemons do.

I'm going to be honest. Every time I read people like you saying "you can just buy an Android if you want that", I get the same vibes as I do when I see, say, old boomers showing up at town hall meetings to oppose the building of the IBX[0]. You're just App NIMBYs, carrying water for a tech industry trying to turn every computer into the tech equivalent of a car-dependent suburb with restrictive zoning laws.

Now if only the EU could pass a law saying Apple needs to ship an Android app that provides all the missing functionality of AirPods on that platform. At the very least, I should be able to update the firmware on them.

[0] Inter-Borough eXpress - A proposed circumferential NYC subway line connecting Brooklyn and Queens.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#224

Post by kmeisthax »

ankit219 wrote: post #104

Are we learning the wrong lessons? Integrated always works better than modular components. Here, Apple is being asked to enable their versions of software for third party devices, which do not have the same hardware assumptions as Apple did. (Apple will not release the exact hardware spec for airpods anyway). This means the newer version will be designed modularly, with some tradeoffs to enable the "same" kind of acc…

The components are modular under the hood, they have to be. Apple just doesn't let you take advantage of it.

iOS has a daemon that reads your notifications and ships them to Apple Watch. They have a daemon that scans for AirPods and gives you UI to pair them. But you as an app developer cannot do any of those things. There was no public API for notification stream access, scanning for specific Bluetooth devices, floating UI widgets, or even just persistent daemons. All of those capabilities more or less exist on Android, which is why multiple smartwatch ecosystems have been built on top of it while iOS only supports the first-party option.

Back in the 2000s, when Apple was just getting into mobile devices, the app development landscape was far less bleak. iTunes on Windows could happily index your entire music and video collection and sync it to an iPod and there was nothing Microsoft could do to stop them. Everything is just finding the appropriate file and connecting to the appropriate USB device to transfer it. And that's more or less how things still work today, except now on smartphones all of that is put into isolated containers and walled off behind private APIs.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#225

Post by big_toast »

morshu9001 wrote: post #161

Apple removed the headphone jack to sell AirPods. This was always one of the dirty little details: You could buy non-Apple BT headphones, but they weren't able to work the same way.

I've had no trouble using corded headphones with my iphones (either via an adapter or e.g. the $20 usb-c earpods). In fact, it seems like people using corded headphones is a news cycle[1] every 6 months.

[1]:https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/dec/19/bluetooth-wi...

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#226

Post by heavyset_go »

aprilnya wrote: post #60
heavyset_go wrote: post #32

Currently, on the AirPods side and not iOS side like the article covers, Apple breaks Bluetooth feature parity with other devices by not sticking to the Bluetooth spec with AirPods themselves. For example, you need to root and patch your Bluetooth stack on your phone if you want to use all of your AirPods features on Android, and not because Android is doing something wrong, it's because the Android Bluetooth stack a…

On the other hand, there’s been a bug open to make a simple harmless change to fix this in Android for 9 months, with no response from Google other than asking for reproduction steps as far as I can tell. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238 Some comments on the bug accuse Google of intentionally not fixing it to make people buy Pixel Buds instead of AirPods. I wouldn’t say that myself, but then again I a…

"The bug", aka not implementing spec violating behavior, also exists in BlueZ, the Linux Bluetooth stack. Is the BlueZ team taking kickbacks to make sure earbuds don't work on Linux, too? They were Google Summer of Code partners, too, so this potentially goes pretty deep.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#227

Post by djtango »

kmeisthax wrote: post #223
tt24 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing, you don't have to be! You are welcome to use another phone more to your liking.

I do! I've been an Android stalwart since I first got a smartphone over a decade ago. Problem is, every year Android announces some new stupid-ass restriction or anti-feature that significantly degrades the capability of application software on the OS in the name of security. In other words, Google keeps trying to turn my Android into a shittier iPhone. It's gotten so bad that they recently floated the idea of mandat…

I was a diehard Android user as the memory of Apple locking down things like the filesystem among other things really sowed some bad blood for me. But these days it really seems like they're kind of converging and Apple's privacy features are quite appealing...

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#228

Post by stavros »

tt24 wrote: post #190
stavros wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have purchased your own Walmart and corporate still decides what you sell within it, then yes, that is exactly the same.

Okay, so it has to be something you purchase - we're slowly getting closer to the true opinion here. Sony is a monopoly as well then? They decide what gets sold in the Playstation store. Same with Nintendo. Ford and Tesla are monopolies, they solely decide what is software is sold or used in their car's infotainment center stores, despite the fact that I have purchased the car! AWS is a monopoly, despite the fact tha…

If you purchase a physical device, yes. You don't buy devices from AWS, you rent. I'm not sure what's hard about this.

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#229

Post by djtango »

tiffanyh wrote: post #112
isodev wrote: post #5

It’s fascinating the kind of cool features we can have when products are made to be useful, with their target user in mind. Go EU!

Or it disincentivizes creating those features, if you must give it to your competitors.

I thought the first thing they teach you about capitalism is that competition is good, and monopolies are anti-competitive...

Re: iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA

#230

Post by deaux »

morshu9001 wrote: post #217
whynotmaybe wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still don't get your point. How can the failures to innovate from privates companies be the responsibility of a political union of different governments?

EU regulations strangle corporate innovation there

And another one parroting this without talking to EU founders.
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