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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

#81

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

llmslave2 wrote: post #72
jwr wrote: post #36

I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users. Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good…

It's a totally reasonable position that both regulation and companies exploiting users are wrong. And it's also entirely a moral assertion that markets should resolve to outcomes judged by members of some political apparatus. Likewise, the idea that a third party should interfere with economic relations between two consenting parties is also a moral judgement, not an absolute fact. Most arguments in favour of regulat…

Markets depend on regulations.

Free market absolutists don’t know what they are talking about.

The actual originators of market capitalism, most famously Adam Smith, but also proponents like Milton Friedman, had no such confusion.

In reality, today’s free market absolutists don’t get their ideas from economists (even free market economists). Instead, they get their ideas from terrible mid 20th century novelists (I’ll let you figure out who I’m talking about), who didn’t know much about how anything worked, never mind economics.

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

#82

Post by kibbber »

Y-bar wrote: post #78
kibbber wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like progressive taxation? Like forbidding discrimination based on skin colour? Ok, sometimes .

Give an example regulation which has objectively been catastrophic and where there has been no clear attempts at amending or improving it.

I quoted a couple.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

quitit wrote: post #65
jwr wrote: post #36

I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users. Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good…

I don't think it's as black and white as you suggest. He just wrote about Japan's implementation of a similar set of laws rather favourably - the theme is that Japan's implementation looks very much like a genuine attempt at protecting users and benefitting end users and developers. While I don't agree with what a lot of what Gruber has to say. A point I do agree with is that the DMA is being sold (by Margrethe Vesta…

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by showsover »

littlestymaar wrote: post #54
fersarr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also usbc in iphones! finally we can just carry one cable

I'm very glad we eventually got standardized chargers. It's too bad the standard happened to be the madness that USB-C is though.

Oh exactly, it's great to have a single cable / charger for many different items in the household. The biggest downside I see with USB-C in this case is that the cables and chargers get quite expensive if you want to be able to just grab one and charge stuff, without having to worry about wattage etc.

All in all a big improvement, with some future improvements left to make. Fingers crossed for a more sane USB-D in twenty years.

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

#85

Post by pityJuke »

formerly_proven wrote: post #38
bluescrn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can headphones that stick to the spec actually play nicely with multiple devices? - switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?

> switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do? They do that? Mine can't even switch quickly between my corporate and my own iphone.

Are they on the same iCloud account? I believe that's the magic needed.

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

#86

Post by bdcravens »

fabioborellini wrote: post #75
Y-bar wrote: post #9

Three months ago a commenter here on HN claimed to me that this will be bad for Apple users: > There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have. If the third party device doesn’t work people will blame Apple even though it’s not their fault. And, competition probably can’t build for it anyway: > It’s impossible to build Apple Silic…

Apple can't perform well with audio on Apple Silicon, either. In 2025 macos is the only OS with audio cracking appearing with CPU load. Even Linux is better

I don't think it's CPU-based, but I've always had an issue with my AirPods Max on my iPhone with audio cracking (my AirPods Pro work fine, and the Max works fine with my Mac)

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

#87

Post by formerly_proven »

pityJuke wrote: post #85
formerly_proven wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do? They do that? Mine can't even switch quickly between my corporate and my own iphone.

Are they on the same iCloud account? I believe that's the magic needed.

Of course not, that's the whole point of having a separate corp phone ;)

But why would switching headphone connections need the cloud... ah... nevermind...

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

#88

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

quitit wrote: post #65
jwr wrote: post #36

I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users. Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good…

I don't think it's as black and white as you suggest. He just wrote about Japan's implementation of a similar set of laws rather favourably - the theme is that Japan's implementation looks very much like a genuine attempt at protecting users and benefitting end users and developers. While I don't agree with what a lot of what Gruber has to say. A point I do agree with is that the DMA is being sold (by Margrethe Vesta…

I just read the post about Japan.

The only example he gave where the MSCA is better than the DMA is:

> E.g. apps distributed outside the App Store in Japan still require age ratings. There’s no such requirement in the EU.

Most of his description of what Japan does better is simply “mutual respect”. Which reinforces the idea that this isn’t about the actual practical differences but about ego. Apple hates how the EU forces them to make change.

And Apple has done this before. After the EU forced them to make a change, which emboldened other nations to push similar changes, Apple points to those other nations’s obviously more streamlined law making process (given that the EU has already gone through the hard work of drafting the law, working with a non-cooperative Apple, and then actually seeing it implemented and the practical issues that arise), to justify their hostility to the EU’s trend setting efforts, without which those other nations would almost certainly have not proceeded.

I bet if Japan’s MSCA had come before the DMA, Apple’s tone towards both those governments would have been reversed.

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

#89

Post by whywhywhywhy »

jwr wrote: post #36

I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users. Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good…

His business is too tied to being in Apple's good graces anyway to take him that seriously these days. In the past he's been given access well above a lot of bigger outlets and way above what a blog that size should have especially when most of his social media output is now on mastodon to an audience the fraction of his X size.

All though I would say EU regulation has far more misses than hits, this and forcing Apple to USB-C were great but millions of man hours a year are burned navigating cookie banners on every website and chat control being forced through soon.

So we have two wins on iOS device convenience, not a great trade off for the other overreach.

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

#90

Post by kalleboo »

clayhacks wrote: post #2

So this tap to pair won’t work in the US? The side loading stuff I can understand to restrict to the EU, but this just seems like a nice feature for everyone

They even restrict "letting you choose the default maps app" to jurisdictions that legally require it (EU and Japan), there is literally no justification for that other than "we want to increase KPIs for our shitty Apple Maps app by making people accidentally open it", it's an extremely basic toggle that pretty much any user of Google Maps would prefer.
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