Apple's App Store, Safari, and iOS Officially Designated 'Gatekeepers' in EU

[fatTribble]

If I can continue to stay immersed in the Apple ecosystem then I’m not sure how much I care if others want to replace apps from who-knows-where and at their own risk.

However, if my bank, my car manufacturer or my cable provider tell me that their app will no longer be in the App Store and I have to side load it from their site, then I have a concern.

I want Apple to review and approve apps for privacy, security, stability and reliability.

I trust Apple more than governments on any continent.

(If you disagree please write a response rather than just hitting the Angry button)

 

[OneBar]

...but at least those things will now be based on competition in more of a free and open market instead of more of a closed market with restrictions on app access.
...

What competition? How does paying a fine to the EU create competition?

 

[webkit]

It is not. Competition is about winning. Being the last standing. Regulation is the antithesis of it. Which is why capitalists rail against it. This isn’t about competition either, it’s exactly what I described. A way for the biggest to cut overhead and make more profit. While the littlest will bear the burden of higher costs, and squeezed out.

Wining, or trying to win, is part of competition but that doesn't mean there aren't rules and regulations involved. Sports is very much about competition and wining but there are plenty of rules as well as consequences from violating those rules.

Again, capitalism is about open competition. That therefore also means there should be laws regulating anticompetitive behavior by dominant companies that can potentially stifle competition or innovation. Capitalism does not seek to allow one or a few companies control a market through unfair, anticompetitive behavior that can stifle competition or innovation.

 

[BaldiMac]

I’m calling it a day on here. I just don’t understand how our American friends, the home of “freedom” are so strongly defending a corporation’s right to limit their freedoms as consumers.

I wish you all a good and productive evening

Stereotypes are unproductive nonsense.

 

[webkit]

So not a single EU company qualified as a gatekeeper? Weird coincidence.

Not very weird considering that U.S. companies dominate the tech industry as much as they do, and antitrust laws are about regulating dominant companies and anticompetitive behavior. If there were EU companies that had as much market power/dominance/control in tech, they would be on the list as well.

 

[fatTribble]

Apple was founded before that. Since when does that matter? Ugh so over Americans bashing anything that isn’t American.

Not true! We love Porsche, BMW and Tic-Tacs! 🥰

 

[redbeard331]

I think you have a point about it being a healthier system. Of course, that’s the system that the US is actually supposed to have. The federal government has gotten completely out of control and gone beyond its areas of responsibility. It’s a larger topic, but to tie it back to this thread, I’m not sure this is an example of the EU system working. If level of control, or things like “gatekeeper” status, are decided by marketshare/power, how can you make a one-size-fits-all solution to a collection of countries that may experience different realities.

America has crushing debt because the federal government decides to spend more than it takes in. If it raised taxes on the rich (who already pay the vast majority of taxes), it would just spend more, not balance the budget. And if taxes were raised on the non-rich, people would actually start asking why the government is spending so much and what they’re spending it on…that’s what the government is really afraid of.

Again, to tie it back to the topic at hand, this just feels like another example of government making a decision because it sounds good, but not wanting to deal with the consequences. We may or may not see negative results from these policies, but you can be sure that if we see negative results, the government won’t take responsibility for them. Kind of like how they don’t balance their books, and then they blame everyone else for it. Very much like how people are complaining because Apple may limit data transfer and transfer speeds on the USB-C iPhones. USB-C does not require Thunderbolt-level speeds. There is nothing illegal about Apple implementing a lower speed-threshold, as long as it‘s USB-C (in the context of these new laws). But the lawmakers probably don’t even understand the overlap and distinctions between USB-C, Thunderbolt, USB 4, etc. now that they get a result they don’t want, they will attack Apple.

This might make some sense America actually had a functioning government, which it does not. America is a corporation, and the corporation acts in its interest alone. This is why it takes the EU to get American companies to do the most basic stuff to protect consumers these days. And this stuff is all pretty trivial compared to things going on in hospitals, for example, seems like all this side loading hulabaloo is a sideshow.

 

[OneBar]

This is a nonsense argument. Apple does not own my device. I do. I paid for it. Apple isn't entitled to a lifetime revenue stream because I bought one of their hardware products. No other computing platform works this way and we should not tolerate it.

No Apple does not own the device once you purchase it. They do still own the operating system, both iOS and macOS.

It is in the best interest of society to have open platforms, not gatekeepers and bridge trolls, which has sadly become Apple's business model. What they're doing is just a digital spin on the old "company store" model where you had to see the company doctor, send your kids to the company school, and shop at the company store. This model is anti-freedom, anti-consumer, and is designed only to further enrich and entrench the bridge troll.

Except you still have other options. No one is forcing you to buy Apple or even buy into their ecosystem if you do. All I have is an iPhone. Wife and oldest have Airs and the oldest has an iPad and that's all the Apple products we have. All my computing is done on a custom built pc. It's only anti-anything if you're forced to purchase only the one product and product family. This is not the case.

 

[fatTribble]

It's 90% "evil EU how dare they do this to an American company, don't they know they suck and have never contributed anything to the world".

I’m surprised at the strong reactions in both directions. Most everyone I’m friends with has a passport and has been to Europe. I’ve been lucky enough to travel there more times than I can count.

 

[BuffaloTF]

Wining, or trying to win, is part of competition but that doesn't mean there aren't rules and regulations involved. Sports is very much about competition and wining but there are plenty of rules as well as consequences from violating those rules.

Again, capitalism is about open competition. That therefore also means there should be laws regulating anticompetitive behavior by dominant companies that can potentially stifle competition or innovation. Capitalism does not seek to allow one or a few companies control a market through unfair, anticompetitive behavior that can stifle competition or innovation.

Yes, a free market is without regulation. That’s what makes it… free.

A regulated market is, well, regulated.

A command market is one controlled by a central entity, such as a government, that controls output and sets prices.

And sports… well, the very existence of leagues kinda establishes that competition is amongst the few, not the many. Unless you’d like to see an MLB team play a Little League team… it would be “competition” after all, but not really. Capitalism would have those teams play each other, there’d be money to be made. Regulation prevents it.

You’re eating hyperbole and regurgitating it as fact.

 

[FastLaneJB]

Imagine if we had a functioning United States government that would have made it clear to the EU that such measures would be met with harsh retaliation.

EU GDP in 2008 was 16.3 trillion. In 2022 it was 16.64 trillion. You’d think maybe someone over there could figure out things aren’t working.

Don’t worry, I’m sure more regulations will fix it.

As an American you might not be aware but the UK left the EU so the 2022 figures are missing the GDP of the UK but 2008 includes it.

 

[bluecoast]

I’m amazed at how many people are defending Apple here.

I love their products but this is a classic case of a market leader hoarding its power anyway that it can and stopping innovation and competition on its platform.

Unfortunately for me, I’m getting older and the situation we have now with big tech as a whole is very similar to the antitrust case vs Microsoft re its monopoly 20 or so years ago, where Microsoft was notorious for killing other companies with bundling (they’re still at it with teams).

And people in the USA : this won’t apply to you. So what does it matter to you?

Aside from this, I think this will be a good thing and will fire up innovation in app development.

I think people will take more chances on developing ideas without having to go through Apple’s somewhat arbitrary and dictatorial approval process.

Even if many people don’t install different app stores, there’s going to be some great new apps that gain traction there (see also: Fortnite) and people will wonder why they’re not on the App Store.

(I’m not a dev nor do I know anyone who is a dev. Just a consumer and a user of apple’s products).

 

[MLVC]

I’m surprised at the strong reactions in both directions. Most everyone I’m friends with has a passport and has been to Europe. I’ve been lucky enough to travel there more times than I can count.

I live in the EU but have studied in the US and visit it yearly. I consider it home away from home. I'll never understand the unnecessary bashing the EU receives on here. Of course the EU isn't perfect, but neither is the US. In the end, these two are so very important for each other in the world we live in. But if you read some comments here they'd shove the EU off the planet the first chance they get.

 

[BuffaloTF]

What are Apple being asked to provide for free?

Well, the big winners of this - the massive companies like Epic and Google - are asking Apple to provide platform development for free, an ecosystem for free, a market for free. Except it won’t be. The low costs to become a developer will become high costs. But not high enough that someone with Epic’s volume won’t come out ahead. All the small devs, though… they’ll get squeezed hard.

 

[Wildkraut]

It was founded in 1984. Forty years ago

My comment was “When was the last time a tech company of any substance came from there?”

Why just tech?
Does BioNTech (mRNA vaccine) count?
Kinda techie too, not?
Anyway, Things that matters, not just lifestyle.
I think they outshine everything in the past 3 years.

If you strike older American Tech Companies, not much is left, too.
Including the one you're defending hardly in here.

 

[JamesHolden]

This sounds like a slippery-slope argument. You can make those kinds of arguments about everything that exists in society so they're not particularly convincing.

It's not a slippery slope argument at all. It's an argument about drawing a line and rejecting gatekeeping. It's so odd to me that people are so anti-government yet so willing to blindly trust for-profit corporations. Apple might be a good guy today, but who knows what tomorrow brings.

Not to mention that Apple routinely hides behind the excuse that it obeys local laws. That's the excuse it gave for pulling thousands of apps from the Chinese App Store at the Chinese government's request. So what happens when some nasty laws get passed here in the US...and the gatekeeper must comply?

The best solution, for the citizen, is to make it as hard as possible for either the government or a corporation to have control over his or her life. The gatekeeper model does the opposite. We should reject it.

Personally, I think the EU is making a mistake by treating the desktop OS/app environment like it's a developer/consumer nirvana. If it was, how did the current mobile OS/app environment get so popular with developers/consumers?

You can't compare the two. There would be no mobile without the desktop market, which took decades to build. I think it's easy to see why the current model became popular. The public, generally-speaking, was a lot more familiar with, even interested in, technology at the beginning of the mobile era than the beginning of the desktop era.

Apple created a much better product with the iPhone and iOS and consumers rewarded them. They made it easy to buy software through the App Store. It's a great product. I remember back in the early 90s, there was a company that sent out an app store on optical disk for NeXTSTEP users. You launched the app store and could trial apps, buy and install them. I think it was a quarterly service. It was so much better than buying software on other platforms at the time, a glimpse of the future. App stores are a huge convenience.

I think the EU is looking at this from the standpoint of what is best for its citizens, not from the perspective of developer/consumer nirvana. The gatekeeper model has a lot of inherent dangers for freedom of expression, freedom of speech, etc. I think the EU is trying to strike a balance.

 

[BuffaloTF]

So you’re ignoring ARM because that’s inconvenient?

arm… the company Apple, an American company, founded and later spun off? Headed by their first CEO, Larry Tesler - from the Bronx - an Apple VP?

 

[Stromos]

Nor should they require developers to release apps in Apple's App Store. In that case, what' the point of opening up access to the platform?

If a developer chooses to move to a different app store, he or she risks losing customers. If the developer makes the move, customers will have to decide if Apple's walled garden is important enough to stop using the app (and find an alternative in the App Store). That's freedom (for the consumer, not the corporation). That's how things work on every other computing platform.

I'm not against Apple making money from the App Store. My objection to the App Store monopoly has nothing to do with what Apple charges, percentages, etc. I object to a platform gatekeeper who, at the flick of a switch, can disable an app and silence people, cut them off from services, etc. For me it's not about Apple, but the obvious, inherent dangers of such a system and allowing such a model to become accepted (and replicated in other industries). That's a sure fire path to the dystopian future we see depicted all too often these days.

On the one hand, Apple fans sing Apple's praises when it comes to security and privacy, yet they think so little of Apple that they believe the entire iOS platform will become a wasteland of malware if third party app stores are allowed. How can both be true? And why isn't the Mac a wasteland of malware?

Every other computing platform is exactly why I'm against it. I want to play Starcraft. I want to play/purchase from Steam my trusted store can I do that? No. I have to download Blizzard's storefront give them my personal/banking information. Starcraft is what it is saying find an alternative is pointless another company can't just copy it and offer it on Steam. I am not better off or getting any benefit.

Apple is a one stop shop. Are they perfect? No. Does that mean I want to trust 20 storefronts instead of 1? No.

Everyone other computing platform has this problem. Need to make sure apps are up to date? Either run every storefront in the background with automatic updates or have a monthly task to check each one.

Sitting there saying you have freedom to use another app is the entire basis of your argument which is literally no different than saying use Android instead.

The apps going to third party Appstores are not going to be mom and pop apps it's going to be the big developers that have been fighting this from the beginning. Major names with apps that have no real alternatives.

If any streaming app goes to its own appstore what alternative are you going to find? You have the freedom to chose to not consume any of that content from then on from your mobile device.

 

[martint235]

arm… the company Apple, an American company, founded and later spun off? Headed by their first CEO, Larry Tesler - from the Bronx - an Apple VP?

Arm grew out of Acorn a UK company. Apple didn’t get involved with it until several years later

 

[JamesHolden]

It's only anti-anything if you're forced to purchase only the one product and product family. This is not the case.

At the moment.

If the gatekeeper model becomes the norm, it will be the case in the future (and it won't just be app stores). You may have a choice between a few different gatekeepers, but they'll all be gatekeepers, and they'll all be capable of turning off the app you use or silencing your speech or tracking you or whatever else they decide to do.

People need to stop making this issue personal because they love Apple. Like many others, I trust Apple a lot more than I trust most other companies and institutions. But I don't trust the gatekeeper model. It is fertile ground for abuse.

 

[bluecoast]

So you want a Government- developed smart phone? Good luck with that.

If Apple did leave Europe, they’d cede the market there to Samsung et al.

Also European lead open source projects such as eos - which is a degoogled version of android - & its commercial company, murena, would step up.

Companies such as Nokia would scale up pretty fast and offer their phones with a version of eos, I’d imagine.

Even if they had to fork Android, the market opportunity would ensure that a lot of capital and engineering chops were devoted to its development.

So in short - the EU would be fine. Apart from Apple fans there of course.

And Apple looking at a 10-20% dip in profits each year from moving out of Europe.

 

[fatTribble]

I live in the EU but have studied in the US and visit it yearly. I consider it home away from home. I'll never understand the unnecessary bashing the EU receives on here. Of course the EU isn't perfect, but neither is the US. In the end, these two are so very important for each other in the world we live in. But if you read some comments here they'd shove the EU off the planet the first chance they get.

I always feel like we can learn from each other. Oftentimes when the news covers some new controversy I’ll ask a friend in Europe how their country handles that situation. I have family members who criticize anything they don’t understand. I think that’s true in other places too.

 

[webkit]

What competition? How does paying a fine to the EU create competition?

I realize these companies are quite wealthy but paying a fine is meant to be a deterrent to engaging in anticompetitive behavior in the same way a speeding ticket, parking ticket, etc. is meant to be a deterrent. It very well may work (e.g., it looks like Apple will comply and allow sideloading or alternative app stores for iOS) but perhaps you feel the fines should be a lot higher?

 

[Red Oak]

Why just tech?
Does BioNTech (mRNA vaccine) count?
Kinda techie too, not?
Anyway, Things that matters, not just lifestyle.
I think they outshine everything in the past 3 years.

If you strike older American Tech Companies, not much is left, too.
Including the one you're defending hardly in here.

Right. Because AI, robotics and VR/spatial computing is not the next US-wave to come to the EU

 

[webkit]

Yes, a free market is without regulation. That’s what makes it… free.

A regulated market is, well, regulated.

A command market is one controlled by a central entity, such as a government, that controls output and sets prices.

And sports… well, the very existence of leagues kinda establishes that competition is amongst the few, not the many. Unless you’d like to see an MLB team play a Little League team… it would be “competition” after all, but not really. Capitalism would have those teams play each other, there’d be money to be made. Regulation prevents it.

You’re eating hyperbole and regurgitating it as fact.

Free does not mean without any laws and regulations. A free market is more about unrestricted competition but when dominant companies restrict competition by engaging in anticompetitive behavior, laws and regulation are needed and should be enforced.