Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 930 posts

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#291

Post by zaik »

dan1234 wrote: post #281
superb-owl wrote: post #5

This 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.

Will it though? I don't know anyone who side loads onto Android, and even Epic gave up and put Fortnite back onto Google play[0]. I'm sure that any side loading will be hidden beneath layers of warnings designed to put off all but the most determined. [0] https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/21/21229930/fortnite-availabl...

F-Droid is somewhat popular among privacy minded folks. You probably want it for NewPipe and Conversations.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#292

Post by Jcowell »

orangecat wrote: post #254
ericmay wrote: post #67

Earlier 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…

It absolutely blows my mind that people are rallying the pitchforks around Apple for "monopolistic corporate scaremongering" Meanwhile it blows my mind that on a site called Hacker News, people are not only enthusiastically handing control of their computing environments to a megacorporation, but insisting that everyone else should do the same.

> people are not only enthusiastically handing control of their computing environments to a megacorporation, but insisting that everyone else should do the same.

Who here is advocating that Everyone else should get iPhones or that Android should be as locked down as iPhones? (These are the only two interpretations I can imagine from this sentence)

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#293

Post by bennysomething »

deepGem wrote: post #200
ParksNet wrote: post #111

Earlier 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…

This is what beats the heck outta me. A company that is sitting on nearly 150B in cash somehow feels the need to pinch 30% commissions from developers till date. I understand this as an initial business model. I mean a 15% reduction in app revenues is not even a rounding error in Apple's P&L. What the hell are they thinking. The goodwill that they'd earn from devs will go a long long way and if they signal that their…

They are there to earn money for their share holders (which to be clear isn't just rich people, it's pensions including pensions for fire departments etc). They must act in their share holders interests. Cutting their fees with no justifiable reason is not something they are going to do.

There's no conspiracy, companies are there to make money, that's it.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#294

Post by ttul »

> Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet.

While I love the idea of being able to finally install SNES emulators and the like, many malicious actors will now pray on unsuspecting iOS users to install spyware, malware, and other crap via third-party app stores. Not everyone is as sophisticated as the typical Hacker News reader; younger and more naive users will be taken in as victims of various types of fraud.

I think that a better path for the European Union would have been to force some regulation of the app store process. Leave in place the parts of Apple's process that provide reasonable guarantees of security and privacy for users, but allow Apple to continue to be the gatekeeper, just with some oversight from regulators.

There are plenty of examples of governments regulating things that we might wish to be a little freer if only such additional freedom didn't come with perilous consequences for consumers. I submit the example of cryptocurrencies. Lots of freedom; very little regulation; many vulnerable people have lost their savings.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#295

Post by oaiey »

rootusrootus wrote: post #269
vorpalhex wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% is an insane amount.

How does it compare to a regular bricks & mortar retail store? Shelf fees, etc? Edit: downvoted for asking a question? Thanks HN.

How does that compare to CDN, stripe Integration, a fancy certificate and a shop web page. That is the question. It is software distribution.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#296

Post by jahewson »

amelius wrote: post #163
obblekk wrote: post #148

I 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…

The problem with these big companies is that they tend to produce useful stuff for the average consumer only. But if they were broken up into smaller companies that created stuff that other businesses can use to build more products, I think we would have a more modular economy with far more choice than the current duopoly offers.

If you’re producing consumer devices you need scale. Huge scale. Niece companies catering to specific audiences sounds great but without scale, the prices would be an order of magnitude higher than you’re used to paying. Modularity itself is costly as integration is one of the main factors driving down consumer devise prices.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#297

Post by caramelcustard »

Jcowell wrote: post #288
caramelcustard wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already is on XBox, so no.

Disagree. “Trivially easy” must be set in common sense to the average consumer. It must be something that they can do easily without any guides or tutorials. Changing my name on Xbox is trivially easy. This[1] is not. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devki...

Disagreeing with your disagreement. How "easy" a tech-related task is to accomplish is determined by the users skills and experience, as well as software/hardware usage patterns that they've learned over the years. Official guides/tutorials for enabling/disabling various functions exist for Google Play/AppStore too. Does that mean that one of the easiest ways to acquire apps that have ever existed is...not easy? Because there really isn't much difference between following a "how to login into my Apple/Google account" tutorial and "how to enable an XBox feature".

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#298

Post by ksec »

I see a lot of Apple Supporters are already calling for Apple to Pull out of the EU.

While this legislation applies to both Apple and Google. It was ultimately Tim Cook's Apple that leads to all these changes. Not only did they refuse to actively engage with the EU ( or any government ), they threaten them by either limiting features, services or even outright pulling out of the country. Their standard PR responses were how many jobs they created via their App ecosystem. I would not be surprised if their next page in their PR playbook were to bring Steve Jobs out one way or another.

There are quite a few things I dont like in this legislation. But I also think Apple deserves it. Governments around the world have been waiting, but not until the EU, which represent 25% of Apple's revenue made their move before they could follow. Now UK, Australia, Japan and South Korea could pick a subset of this legislation to use as their own.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#299

Post by GlitchMr »

reaperducer wrote: post #253
Karunamon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full devils advocate here, but the argument I've always heard is that the play store is a lot less arbitrary and restrictive than the App Store, so there's less reason to want to go outside of it. Apple locks out so many useful kinds of software that there actually may be enough momentum for real alternate app stores to proliferate.

Apple locks out so many useful kinds of software For someone who doesn't have a personal Android phone, what useful software is out there that I can get on an iPhone? Related: What mass-market software is out there that isn't available on the iPhone? I don't mean *nix tools and niche game emulators. Things that would make many people actually care about alt stores?

- Web browsers with ad-blocking and plug-ins (Apple currently requires all web browsers to use system Webkit with very limited APIs).

- Game cloud streaming services (xCloud, Stadia, GeForce Now).

- Unofficial clients for websites such as YouTube that add features that official client doesn't have.

- Tools to disable advertisements in applications.

- Programs licensed under GPL as Apple App Store bans those.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#300

Post by DavideNL »

hyperpape wrote: post #175

There'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…

> Apps will use near-field communication technology and other mechanisms to track us

So, then do not allow any apps the NFC permission... problem solved.

The point is, Apple should not be the one dictating what users can and can not use;

Example: on macOS you can disable SIP. 99% of the people i know do not even know what SIP is, nor that this possibility exists. However, if we/Developers/researchers/etc. want it, they can choose to do as they like. Which is really useful.

Researchers should not be limited in finding (security) flaws, neither should users be limited by Apple to use their hardware as they wish.

Post reply on HN