 This is the framing Apple wants to sell for their decision to withhold features from the EU, and blogs are parroting it. In reality, Apple is purposefully withholding these features from the EU, either because Apple are being retaliatory against EU customers for the existence of the DMA, or because Apple (with full knowledge of the DMA for years) refused to build these features in compliance with it. Apple chose to harm their products in the EU. The DMA didn't. This framing is marketing. 80 comments
I genuinely don't understand what Apple's trying to do with this pissing match with the EU. If the goal is to drum up public opinion against the DMA, Apple's a "multiple trillions of dollars" company, they aren't the scrappy upstart making quirky iPod ads in the 2000s, they ARE the institutional player. Nobody has sympathy for "uwu we are being bullied by regulators" from the mouths of the megacorp.  @stevestreza It also seems they just don't understand how negatively the average European views big megacorps. We despise them, deeply. Like, we choose government over corporation any day of the week. I don't think they really understand what they're up against here. The DMA and similar laws are insanely popular here, as is the EU - despite the rightwing hate campaign, the EU enjoys like 80+% support here. @thomholwerda @stevestreza I had to move from mac to windows because of how annoying apple fans are and I didnt want any part of it. @aqunt   @stevestreza it seems to be working on the Apple diehards, i've already seen a bunch be like "waaa, the EU will be behind because it'll miss on bleeding-edge features because of the DMA" 😒 @Eramdam
I think you might be surprised how many people will very happily accept Apple's framing of the issue  @stevestreza On the other hand, only a multi-trillion another corporation has the resources to push back against the entire EU. My guess is that is their goal, and this has been a long time coming. Sooner or later, the EU was going to impose enough restrictions on digital companies that we would see a company pull the "It is no longer economically viable to offer our products and services in the EU marketplace" card... And see if the European community has become globally monocultural enough to call the EU's bluff. @mark It is very funny to refer to a company deliberately violating regulations put in place against that specific company as "pushing back against the entire EU".  Let them pull out of the EU. It's not like it's a 500-million-people largely quite wealthy market that Apple could ill afford to loose. I can't shed a tear for a supranational extremely arrogant US megacorp who thinks they are mightier than God and deserve anything and everything they want and demand @dmitriid @stevestreza indeed, I think that's the next play in this game. I believe Apple is seeking to determine whether a 500-million-person-quite-wealthy demographic is dependent enough on their ecosystem of products and services that they would be willing to leverage the power such wealth and influence brings to try and push back on the EU's new laws. What soft power can they leverage that will make it politically inconvenient for the EU to continue to pursue this gatekeeping strategy? You mean, what soft power can we leverage to make it inconvenient for Apple to pursue its gatekeeping strategy. I also like that you basically say "Apple should figure out how to hold Europeans hostage to get whatever it wants" As for the EU, first understand what the EU is and does: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-eu-and-tech/ Thank you for this very detailed and measured response! I could argue or disagree with some minor points, but that would not be productive. The only "big" disagreement I have is "if Apple withholds services in compliance with the law" in that this assumption rests on Apples claims. And we've already seen in the past how Apple reversed course after making similar claims. But yeah, it truly is a huge weird bet, so we'll need a lot of popcorn to watch how it plays out. @mark @dmitriid @stevestreza Apple, like us, has historical evidence that Google prefers to follow Apple than compete. Android is not very different than iOS. Apple may even have personal relationships or contracts that make Google’s position more likely to be that of follower than competitor. Google could surprise us all though. EU regulations certainly give Google reason to break with Apple’s direction and I would hope they’d capitalise on it if Apple withheld features in EU.  @mark Are you aware of how fully Apple has capitulated on their products and human rights in, say, China? @stevestreza @stevestreza it’s useful to read John Gruber about Apple stuff because he’s good at thinking like the people inside of Apple - you can look at the flaws in his thinking and see if they act as good predictors of how Apple ends up behaving. What I’ve seen from him recently is an inability to understand that the EU has genuinely different values than an American of his age and economic class, along with a petulant desire to show up those who disagree. I bet he’s mirroring the attitudes of Apple executives. (about Apple values) @stevestreza they want to affect future regulation ( in US probably ) if they create "feeling" that EU regulation is bad for AI then we can not do more regulation of AI in US because we are better than EU, of course...  @stevestreza There are actually plenty of people who think that Apple are the good guys and that the EU regulators are meddlers. Here's one. @stevestreza I mean, to be fair: Apple fans are special sometimes. So it might just work. @stevestreza but we should have sympathy for this commission that tells us we are too stupid to choose for ourselves what we want? Apple’s closed system has always been proven lightyears ahead when it comes down to privacy and security. In the meanwhile in the EU we are still clicking “reject cookies” on every website whilst cookies are still being installed. 🙄 @stevestreza Maybe it's also just about money. It's more difficult and expensive to follow EU's rules. I think most Europeans thinks it's great when EU fines big corps like Apple and Google for not complying with our laws. The laws are here to protect the citizens. @stevestreza Anyway, what I wanted to say is, that I'm so used to Apples features not coming to my country until often a couple of years after. Both because of EU's regulations and because I live in a small country with a silly language.
what lmao @stevestreza fucking why do these website refuse to say anything other than "oh no poor Apple" this is the worst and silliest framing they could go with @Lunaphied @stevestreza These sites are all Apple-focused and probably have good relationships with the company for products reviews, launch events, etc. It's in their best interests to parrot the company line. The real question is, what do impartial tech blogs and general news sources say?  @stevestreza If I had to choose between having my data privacy respected and my data protected from megacorpos, or being able to control my phone from my computer, I'd choose privacy 100% @stevestreza @stroughtonsmith well they are all US based mediums. They will defend Freedom of Murica Companies above all else. If it was up to most of those, iPhone would keep using lightning until 2040 @stevestreza Seems like a great opportunity for a someone to start a tech company in the EU that will satisfy the EU requirements and serve the market as a local supplier and eat Apple's lunch there. Additionally, framing it like this Apple skirts the "you can't use DMA provisions to shit on DMA" part of DMA (can't remember the precise wording)  @stevestreza or maybe just because they really don't want anyone else to be able to say "I want to piggy back on your innovation for free because you have to let me because the DMA". As much good as it does the DMA, it is broken in a number of core decisions in terms of forcing things the EU should just leave their hands out of because the people making those Decisions have no clue about what theyre mandating or the scope of their definitions. @heals You and/or Apple are free to lobby for changes to the DMA all you like, that doesn't change the present reality that Apple is choosing to make their products worse in the EU while also conducting business in the EU, and they don't get a pass on it because a regulatory framework isn't perfect. @stevestreza I would honestly not count a platform wide feeding of my personal data to an AI model an improvement. Neither is the addition to Share play. The one thing that would havelbeen?nice is the remote iPhone screen on a mac but I guess I'll survive as I have since 2007. I am happy that I do not have to look for a system wide toggle to disable Apple intelligence. @stevestreza same goes for the DMA's cross-messenger demands without any clear definition of *how* or *who* is responsible to handle the interaction between different E2E encrypted services - someone just went "I want to message WhatsApp from Signal, make it work" without consideration of integrity, privacy or compliance to the GDPR or the E2E security. @heals This. Very much this. I’m very annoyed that since Apple is against the DMA we can’t say anything bad about it without being categorized at Apple bootlickers. I honestly believe that the messaging interoperability requirement is volountarily something that weakens E2E to put a foot into the door for messaging app snooping: all you need is to get one app to comply and you get messages from other services, yay! And then chat control showed up silently. @stevestreza @heals if that’s the case then like any business Apple will suffer for it when people vote with their wallets @stevestreza @heals Apple is not making products *worse* in the EU, they’re making products *less anti-competitive* in the EU ;) Seriously though, I think Apple is anticipating that the EU could find those new features anti-competitive, and fine Apple tens of billions (more?) as a result. That fine could easily be way more than the value-added from the new features. I expect parties to act in their own best interest.  @stevestreza not sure I understand the full context. If a law is not completely clear to me as a company then I would not offer a product in the country where that law is applicable – until everything is clarified. It might be that everything is completely clear to Apple and they have hidden motives, but what are the indicators ? @kontrafiktion At any large company there is a legal team and a compliance team to ensure that products are going to be ok with regulators. Apple has a whole website just to talk about how great they are at compliance. https://www.apple.com/compliance/ There is zero chance they are not completely and institutionally aware of what is expected of them by the EU and the DMA. It is settled law and has been for a year and a half. @stevestreza in my experience a product can be ‘finished' and it may still take many months until all ‘compliance’ is done. The back and forth between ‘product’ and ‘legal/compliance’ is sometimes mind boggling and seems to be written by Kafka … If I can release my product already in countries where the compliance requirements are simpler, I would choose to release them as early as possible. @kontrafiktion Nope, at these companies, compliance is baked into the product process, because it HAS TO BE. And if it isn't, then it's arguably negligent on Apple's part to know a regulation existed and not accounting for it in development. Compare this to GDPR, which also had heavy-handed regulations that can be reasonably complained about. Apple has no problem integrating those regulatory rules into their products from day one. Why? Because they know they will need to.  @kontrafiktion @stevestreza It might also be that sufficiently much of the law is clear to them and they don’t feel it’s in their commercial interests to comply with it (so they take the legal remedy of not putting themselves in the jurisdiction of that law). I’m not against some DMA-like law (leaving aside whether I think this one “works”), but if some jurisdiction said “you can’t sell your software unless you give all our citizens free hardware to run it on”… 1/2 @kontrafiktion @stevestreza … then you’d understand if Microsoft refused to do business in that jurisdiction. The EU has said Apple can comply with their law or get out; Apple are saying that if those are the choices they’d like to take option 2. You can ask whether that’s the right decision *from Apple’s perspective*—perhaps they’re not being sufficiently … patient, to pick up on @gruber’s theme … but if they don’t want to play, that’s their decision @kontrafiktion @stevestreza @gruber As I say, I’m in favour of regulation of various kinds, and I’m not convinced that the EU is being covertly protectionist, but if “Apple decides not to offer infringing features in Europe” wasn’t somewhere on the list of potential outcomes of the DMA, these specific regulators messed up their plan. @kontrafiktion @stevestreza @gruber Personally I think I’d like someone to step in and fill the commercial niche. As remarked above, Apple has shifted over the last 20 years from “plucky rebel” to “established order” and maybe it’s time for a new disruptive upstart to emerge—if only to keep them honest. @stevestreza The EU has said Apple must comply with their rules or face extremely large fines based on global revenue and possibly a breakup attempt. It would be negligent of Apple management to do anything other than delay new offerings in that market until they see how the current disagreements play out. @jmwolf The regulation has existed for a year and a half. It's not a surprise to them. They know what they need to do to be in compliance. @stevestreza The EU says themselves it’s more about the spirit than the letter. That’s a quote. Have they specifically stated what Apple needs to change? @jmwolf Saying it’s about the spirit is the EU admitting they very poorly wrote the DMA and will just use it to sue however they please.  @stevestreza this is just Apple saying “don’t piss on my shoes and tell me it’s raining EU”  @stevestreza Jon Gruber decided long ago that he'd rather be a WWDC and Apple event mainstay than think and act independently. As a result, Daring Fireball is an interesting bad takes generator. @stevestreza A part of me hopes this is Apple, knowing they’re about to get slammed with fines, drumming up easy press against the DMA while they check that the new publicly announced screen sharing/mirroring stuff violates things further. Holding AI features hostage in a region they weren’t announced to be released yet seems unnecessary, dumb, and merely to add to the Big Mean DMA narrative. My gut sides with you though. @stevestreza Worth noting they're withholding a SINGLE feature set (the new Siri stuff) from the lineup, and are scheduled to release it in 2025, and they haven't even released the reason, "Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act" is all that I've seen.
  @stevestreza i can’t help but see Joz’s arrogance (in The Talk Show, every year) as the face of Apple  @stevestreza Not having the iPhone mirroring is a tough one to take! It's like the best feature they announced - how could that possibly run afoul of the DMA or be connected to the AI controversy? @stevestreza   @stevestreza The correct wording is "Apple won't be releasing these features in the EU because they refuse to comply with local legislation". But hey, propaganda outlets don't make money by publishing objective news. @stevestreza @zilahu I think it’s more of the case what has been written here: https://spyglass.org/no-ai-for-you-eu/ @stevestreza @zilahu You could ask: “Why don't they put in the effort to make the mirroring feature DMA compliant and announce + ship globally only when it's ready?” @Gerego @stevestreza all they have to do is open the api for iphone mirroring. Btw. Air drop only works on apple ecosystem, yet it is dma clompiant…  @stevestreza Are these the same people not caring about Apple caving to China’s demand and restrictions? |
Gregory's Server
@stevestreza ah but you see, Apple knows what people need better than themselves and their democratically elected representatives and must be allowed to do everything they want for that goal
(not saying politics is perfect… just that Apple is that pretentious as always)