Apple vs the Law

I really hope the EU keeps up the pressure. The level of control the gatekeepers have is beyond ridiculous. Sure there’s the “take your money elsewhere” option but we’re at a point where that’s just not realistic to be a normal person. (My sons nursery for example requires an app that only exists on iOS/Android).

EU looks set to be the only big enough institution with any spine or willingness to take this on. Will probably take years if it ever happens due to all this legal dance bullshit, but I really hope they win eventually, even if it’s just for the benefit of EU citizens (of which I am, sadly, not).

Starting to feel like it'd be more sensible to just have the EU fund an independent phone OS/Hardware. Export the hardware specs so everyone can build the hardware for it, then come preinstalled just like Android is doing now.

The whole point of the gatekeeper designation is that they gatekeep access to things in such a way that you can’t simply take your money elsewhere. If you want to use a popular banking app, it’ll be available on exactly two platforms: iOS and Android.

You're right the way that they should force Apple and all the other phone manufacturers to open their bootloader and provide a common interface so that we can finally have some real freedom and competition on the mobile OS market. We should not settle for anything else than the freedom we already have on PCs.

We effectively have a duopoly. It's impossible for a third operating system to gain any traction and until that changes we're stuck with these two options.

A lot of things nowadays rely on apps so not having a phone with either Android or iOS means it's increasingly hard to do stuff. For example, with 2FA regulation in the EU for banks, they effectively made their mobile apps indispensable for being able to make some payments. I shouldn't have to use either iOS or Android to bank but here we are. It's even worse when you can't even use a custom ROM because the apps refuse to work on one.

I think there is enough very good competition on the phone side. Google, Samsung, many other asian brands. The DMA (to my understanding) is about what happens on top of the phone once you are a (golden caged) user of that product and cannot move out.