Apple must open iPadOS to sideloading within 6 months, EU says

The iPad App Store is perhaps an even more dysfunctional place than the iPhone in how much it holds hardware and use cases hostage to the manufacturer's vision. Just imagine how much more versatile the iPad Pro would be if only you could run Linux VMs on it in the moments you want to do anything remotely tinkery on an iPad.

Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads have the RAM (16gb on higher storage models), appropriate keyboard and trackpads, the works. Great hardware being held back by Apple's vision people weren't allowed to deviate from.

A straightforward reading of the DMA suggests that Apple is not allowed to restrict apps from using hardware features. Let's hope that means Parallels/VMware style VMs are possible without too much of a fight.

Is it right to say that currently the cost of the hardware is being partly subsidized by the profits Apple makes from the software? If some of the profit from the software gets taken away will we see the price of the hardware rise?

The cost of custom chips is massive, but then manufacturing is cheap - after selling N units to pay off the initial investment, it's almost free (unit cost) when done at scale.