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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2022-07-05, 14:13

The EU is working hard to make the iPhone not the iPhone.

I'm reading down through this partial list and asking myself, "How in the hell is Apple supposed to differentiate itself from its Android competitors?"

The EU's requirements will require Apple to undergo hundreds of millions of dollars of software development just to make the OS more like Android and Windows.

I'm sure some of you will dance and whoop that Apple's work on the iPhone is about to be completely undermined, but what the EU is demanding is that Apple make the iPhone into Not iPhone™. I suspect advertising and data-collection companies are behind this move, since Apple has worked very hard to strip them of their privacy-robbing objectives, but all of that is about to go away. And, no, there will not be a "EU iOS" and a "everywhere else iOS". The crap that is coming out of this will force Apple to either abandon the EU altogether (billions of dollars left on the table) or strip the iPhone down to an expensive Android phone. I cannot see a path that does not leave the iPhone as anything other than Not iPhone™.

Here is a partial list of requirements in the interest of "fairness".

- Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet.
- Allow developers to offer third-party payment systems in apps and promote offers outside the gatekeeper's platforms.
- Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those belonging to a gatekeeper. This includes making messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable with third-party services upon request.
- Give developers access to any hardware feature, such as "near-field communication technology, secure elements and processors, authentication mechanisms, and the software used to control those technologies."
- Ensure that all apps are uninstallable and give users the ability to unsubscribe from core platform services under similar conditions to subscription.
- Give users the option to change the default voice assistant to a third-party option.
- Share data and metrics with developers and competitors, including marketing and advertising performance data.
- Set up an independent "compliance function" group to monitor its compliance with EU legislation with an independent senior manager and sufficient authority, resources, and access to management.
- Inform the European Commission of their mergers and acquisitions.

The DMA also seeks to ensure that gatekeepers can no longer:

- Pre-install certain software applications and require users to use any important default software services such as web browsers.
- Require app developers to use certain services or frameworks, including browser engines, payment systems, and identity providers, to be listed in app stores.
- Give their own their own products, apps, or services preferential treatment or rank them higher than those of others.
- Reuse private data collected during a service for the purposes of another service.
- Establish unfair conditions for business users.

Welcome to the EU, where "we cannot compete, so we outlawed competition" is the new model of business strategy. I wish this strategy wouldn't have any far-reaching effects, but it will. It really sucks when over-reaching, serve-the-corporation government tactics lead to the destruction of a great product.

Basically, developers get access to all of your secure, private information, and you are helpless to stop them. For ever, Apple's customers have been the people that buy their products. With the EU's new rules, Apple is being forced to make developers the top priority, to do so for free, to hand over sensitive information, and to make their actual customers a commodity to be sold.

Were I Apple — and were I not beholden to the shareholders — I would abandon the EU market just to make a point. But, that won't happen. Apple is a publicly traded, for-profit corporation whose primary product is about to change radically, and not for the better.

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- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)
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