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

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661–670 of 930 posts

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

#661

I’m happy with this. Apple was begging for this with their narsistic and arrogant anti-consumer behavior. Also app store these days is pretty much ruined. Almost all new apps are ”free” but in the end require a monthly membership or some other BS. Hopefully soon we can just pull apps directly from github releases.

…or you could pay developers what they charge. Stop participating in a race to the bottom.

The github open source software costs $0. I’m fine paying that.

You can keep on paying $19.99/month for a calculator in Apple’s closed fake market if you want even after this regulation.

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

#662
post #40
post #13

It will be interesting to see what dark patterns Apple will come up with to resist this. I imagine every time you open Firefox you will get a popup window saying "Do you want to use Safari instead?"

Using different browsers and setting them as default is already possible in iOS. They are just forced to use WebKit as the rendering engine instead of Blink or Gecko.

> Using different browsers and setting them as default is already possible in iOS. They are just forced to use WebKit as the rendering engine instead of Blink or Gecko.

That's like saying gay people can legally marry in Saudi Arabia, they just have to marry people of the opposite sex.

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

#663
post #619

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There are middle points in there, before your extreme.

What extreme?

Letting people decide what permissions on their apps is the middle ground.

The extremes are letting Apple decide what you can and can't run on your phone, or letting apps decide what you can or can't run on your phone.

That some people are too ignorant to set phone permissions is their problem. We still sell sharp knives even though people cut themselves all the time. Demanding Apple protect us is the digital equivalent of banning anything sharper than a butter knife.

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

#664
post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one chooses phones based on browser engines. Why anyone is upset with Apple improving security by only allowing executable pages in Safari is beyond my comprehension.

I would, after this and switch to usb-c. 3 months ago I was deciding where to put 1300 euro, apple vs samsung top of the line, and samsung won. This was 1 out of cca 4-5 points that decided it (sideloading, notch, usb-c, better zoom photos for family/nature, weight... apple had only battery as plus). Firefox mobile with ublock origin (and other plugins) makes general internet seriously usable. Sideloading for me is n…

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

#665
post #607

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> And even if you're a die hard fan of closed computing, nothing bad will happen. You'll simply pick Safari, never sideload an app, and pay with Apple Pay. We can coexist. This is the important point. Just like with decentralized VS centralized debate, starting out with one of them, decides if you can even have the other one. If you have a decentralized foundation (like HTTP), you can always add centralized entities…

This is naive and assumes that there aren’t bigger, badder actors to deal with - Facebook, Google, and others can and will abuse their position. This will make the iPhone worse for everyone, especially if chrome manages a dominant position and developers can stop supporting safari. It will probably make my Mac worse, too. I still haven’t heard a single good reason why people who want sideloading can’t just use Androi…

Exactly, Hands. Off. My. iPhone, let me install what ever I want on my device.

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

#666

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They already do this to an extent[0], but maybe they're trying to make iMessage interop with RCS by force. 0: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/callkit

This one I can definitely see backfiring for the EU. Apple will just release a MessagesKit (maybe even an Android version) which will allow third party apps to read/write messages to the network. Which will simply grow its footprint and promote inoperability.

> which will allow third party apps to read/write messages to the network.

I worry that this will be mainly used for spam.

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

#667
post #470

I think California should add legislation to check the power of the European car makers. Make sure that the German cars interoperate with the Ford components and can be serviced by other independent car dealerships as well. BMW and Porsche should also share their advertising numbers.

Your suggestions seem to come with a bit of spite, but if they protect consumers I'm all for them.

I'm not sure how interchangeable car parts are, but what the EU is doing is requiring things that are known to work: you could always sideload on Android or any computer ever, you could always install any browser anywhere except on iOS, you could always use any payment system, etc etc etc.

The EU is basically requiring Apple to not block competitors, not to go out of pocket in supporting them.

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

#668
post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one chooses phones based on browser engines. Why anyone is upset with Apple improving security by only allowing executable pages in Safari is beyond my comprehension.

Do you also want Apple to improve security by not allowing sideloading on their PCs as well?

Side loading and the ARM Never eXecute sandbox are totally different things. There is only one iOS browser because reasonable JavaScript performance requires JIT compilation, but allowing writeable executable pages is difficult to secure.

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

#669

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I love the walled garden. You want a self-managed server, buy one. I want a foolproof thin client for myself and all the older people in my life

Are you saying that old people who have difficulty figuring a phone will suddenly become a techie that can find an obscure setting? Complete FUD. Stop fearmongering.

No, they don't just "Find an obscure setting". A website tells them exactly where to look, exactly what to do, and they have motive to do it because they want whatever this app is promising. These kinds of scams are all over the place.

Open up your browser's developer console while on Facebook and you'll see FB's desperate attempt to get you to not start typing in commands.

When Epic got up in arms about Google's fees, they published a sideload-able version of FortNite, and some users ended up installing a fake virus-laden version (https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/aug/10/fortnite-on-an...).

How many Linux users run arbitrary shell commands they find online while trying to fix or install something? What about some curl command somewhere that downloads and executes whole scripts? And Linux users tend to be very technically oriented.

This is not FUD. We're there. This is happening today.

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

#670

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> "Are you really sure?", "Apple takes no responsibility not warranty" Sounds good to me. As a techie who maintains several phones for several family members at a variety of tech-literate levels, I certainly hope this experience sucks and is difficult to figure out.

I love the walled garden. You want a self-managed server, buy one. I want a foolproof thin client for myself and all the older people in my life

Well, get them to install AppleSafe™, which will give them the curated Apple experience by locking out all sideloading, and requires them to call Apple and go through menus in order to remove it.
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