Apple vs the Law

> "They managed to convince the courts that iPadOS is a separate operating system to iOS (it's not), which delayed iPadOS being designated as a gatekeeper for almost a year. They are currently challenging all of the rest: the iOS, Safari, and App Store designations, and successfully managed to avoid iMessage being designated at all. They have taken the DMA law to court for an apparently ambiguous comma in article 5(4) - the payment one, and for somehow infringing on human rights law in article 6(7) - the interoperability one."

Looking at the actual filing[1], Apple says:

> "First plea in law, alleging that Article 6(7) of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 is inconsistent with the requirements of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and the principle of proportionality, and that Article 2(b) of the European Commission Decision of 5 September 2023 is unlawful insofar as it imposes the obligations under Article 6(7) of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 on Apple in relation to iOS."

For context, here are the full contents of Article 6(7):

"The gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such services."

[1] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsession...

Apple creates vertically integrated devices. For many people, Apple dictates their entire digital life - far more so than any megacorporation on the mere level of, say Google, could ever hope to, considering Apple owns the hardware, software, and everything in between. So they are in a position shared by no other company - they are entirely unique in this. You cannot buy a device with entirely Google-designed hardware and software - Pixels with Android come close, Chromebooks come close, but nothing reaches Apple, even without custom silicon. I would say the closest company that exists in terms of vertical integration is Oxide Computer, but those aren't consumer devices.

So it's not that Apple is the only company doing this. It's also not that they're "doing it worse than any other company". It's that when they do this it affects people on a level not shared by any other company. It has a much larger impact than anybody else ever could.

For the record, I don't mind Apple's vertical integration, in fact that's one of their main selling points for me. It just gives them the greatest possible leverage to implement these sorts of practices.

This wouldn't be much of an issue, of course, if Chrome would just run on iOS like it does on any other OS, so Google can implement PWAs themselves.

You do understand that the reason it doesn't is because Apple won't let it, not that Google don't want to?

I don’t really understand this distinction. How is eg a Pixel 9 Pro running Android with GMS on a Tensor any less entirely Google-designed than an iPhone 16 is entirely Apple-designed?

It's clearly a win for Apple.

Android is developed by the Open Handset Alliance[0], which is not just Google:

    Its member firms included HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics(formerly), T-Mobile, Nvidia, and Wind River Systems.

I will say though I'd never heard of the Tensor until now, that's very interesting. I guess I am out of date on Pixels.

Apple owns manufacturing and patents for most of the tech they use in their phones (e.g. batteries, biometric sensors, and so on). Google Pixels use third-party suppliers (e.g. their fingerprint sensors are usually from FPC, Goodix or Qualcomm), they follow the same sets of protocols as other Android devices, and they use many of the same drivers provided by the third-party component vendors. For this reason I also wouldn't say the Microsoft Surface is vertically integrated. At best it's designed to work well with the software that's on it, and the software has had some features added for the device. Maybe that's some measure of vertical integration, but not quite to the level of Apple.

Apple certainly doesn't own everything; for example the actual display panel in an iPhone usually is manufactured by Samsung or LG Display. In my opinion though they still own enough to be far more integrated than Pixels are.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance

In no way am I suggesting that Apple are on the way out, but they have definitely started to turn the same corner that IBM and Microsoft have in the past. They are becoming seen as 'big business' instead of 'challenging underdog'.

Apart from being irrelevant and whataboutism, this is the narrative Apple is playing, particularly towards its userbase.

The EU regulation doesn't focus on Apple in any way, the purpose of the DMA is to have objective criteria to identify a scaled market of digital goods with an uneven playing field for all players.

The EU DMA has identified that Apple created a closed market of significant size, made themselves the gatekeeper and invited companies to compete there. But Apple participates in the market also as a player, and skews the playing field in their favor.

So it's an unjust market where forces are unable to flow freely, and the EU is attempting to rectify that.

The reasons why Apple is in such public focus on this are #1 because they operate an unusual amount of closed markets and #2 because they WANT this: it is part of Apple's strategy to rally publicly against the regulation and shape a different perception of it.

This was the way developers were supposed to develop apps for the iPhone when it was released, before Apple introduced the App Store.

The problem is rather that PWAs would prove a viable path for universal cross-platform applications, taking away the gatekeeper role the OS-vendors have.

Paradoxically PWA-support is also part of the "we're no gatekeeper" narrative, so it's in the OS-vendor interest to keep it maintained as a hampered alternative to native apps.

That early built up reputation has got them far, and I would say has continued on for about another decade or so after the iPhone launch. Since that, their coninued lawsuits and anti competitive practices have been more and more prevalent in mainstream media, and that previous reputation is now begining to tarnish amonst normal consumers. When the standard user sees them as big business and not the challenging underdog anymore, it paves the way for a new cooler small tech company to come and steal their bacon.

I believe that tipping point has come.

Jobs framed it that way, but IIRC, all you could do is create bookmarks. Creating an icon on the Home Screen? Impossible. Reliably storing data on-device? Impossible. Backing up your on-device data? Impossible. Accessing your on-device contacts, photos? Impossible.

Also, Jobs made a vision statement about web apps in June 2007, but Apple announced a SDK only four months later (in October 2007) and shipped it in March 2008.

⇒ I’m fairly sure he knew about that SDK when he made that statement.

Also that was precisely the idea behind Windows 9x Active Desktop apps.

Since then their reputation has been slowly eroding with the average consumer with the combined stagnation of product design, and the string of high profile anti consumer and anti competitive moves highlighted in the media. We have seen this before in big tech, and I look forward to the next cool disruptor taking their place.

Maybe they are just different-thinking, artistic, humanist underdogs after all.

Android accomplishes this by allowing devices to connect to private app stores and repos, which enable companies to issue their own apps on their own terms. As Apple plays hard ball on this front, the only way is to use a PWA.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

Apple isn't in the position it is just because they make factually good hardware or because of their business practices - they are where they are because the competition constantly shoots itself with a sawn off shotgun.

Apple invented installable mobile web apps.

Link about the needed metatag: https://www.mobilejoomla.com/forum/4-feature-requests/330-ip...

Steve Jobs introducing web apps as the way to develop apps for the iPhone in 2007: https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...

_How_ do they claim that this section is inconsistent with the European Charter of Fundamental rights?

They were also doing visits to universities showing how great it was the BSD / NeXTSTEP foundations of OS X, for doing UNIX related stuff.

Similar to how NeXT used to position itself against Sun, and other UNIX workstation vendors.

During my CERN stay at 2003 - 2004, they did visits to our IT telling more or less the same.

Had the coloured Macs with OS X Aqua or the iPod failed the market, that was it, yet another footnote of remarkable computing history company now gone.

Tech savy windows users that are trying out Apple are finding that it very much doesnt 'Just Work' anymore, and that sentiment is starting to creep out more and more.

Take a look at Linuses recent evaluation of macOS by using only a Mac for a solid 2 months. His conclusion is that it is no better or worse than windows, and definitely doesnt 'Just Work'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOgRmw1atFU

We techies always saw it, but the average consumers are only just begining to catch up.

If I buy a Google phone, no one is going to comment on it. If I buy an Apple, or a Tesla, or luxury vehicle, people are going to comment on it.

If Apple is known to be scummy and you buy it, it makes you look bad. I think we are seeing that with Tesla now, I doubt too many liberals are buying a cybertruck.

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075

The decline takes a long time to set in though. MS had lost the plot by 2012 (the release of Windows 8), but they’ve been shambling on for more than a decade since then.

And I must admit, this phone has already had a good run. If it lasts that long, I’ll be impressed for sure.

Symbian I just never had an Phone expensive enough to use like that.

In the end none of them really worked out I guess.

Google does something quite similar, though; Chrome can install applications into Android's app drawer, but that requires privileges other browsers can't attain, needing to resort to things like widgets instead. Firefox doesn't care about PWAs and Apple doesn't care about any platform but their own, so it's not as obvious a problem, but Android is full of "you must be the manufacturer or Google to compete" permissions. Android is just a lot better at fair competition than iOS, to the point you'd barely notice.

Smart phones took over from personal computers, because people want something which works and they hate having to fiddle with their device, trouble shoot and fix things. They don't care that they can't install an Arch Linux terminal on it or download torrents. And if they need something more pro, they go for an iPad or a Macbook when they can choose. Openness is only important for programmers and people who love to mess with their device, not for the public at large.

No it can't. The web will never support what's necessary for parity with native apps. Imagine trying to implement Liquid Glass in CSS.

I'm not 100% sure no other mobile OS allowed this before to be honest, but I'm pretty iOS is the one that popularized it.

I'm nearly there myself. The problem is, and what the EU in theory is trying to solve, is there's no real competition. My choice is Apple, which while an anti-competitive PITA, provides some real nice quality of life features and some privacy protections, or Android which can be a mixed bag from needing to connect every new phone to my computer and use ADB to get rid of crapware, or Pixels where Google is increasingly expanding Gemini's tentacles into every aspect of your life to harvest data all while taking actions to slow down Graphene OS by limiting access to device trees.

Linux is fine enough on the desktop, but for everything else? (Phone, watch, etc.) I can either live within the walled garden and just accept it, or take my pick of crapware loaded devices, or sketchy vendors that don't patch their stuff, and have all my data sold to the highest bidder.

We desperately need more competition in the mobile & wearables space, and I don't mean many different flavors of Android, I mean more competitors that care about user experience, preserve your privacy to an extent, and aren't using the platform as just yet another way to serve ads and harvest data.

Even with all the faults and degrading quality, it's still above any of proprietary alternatives, particularly Windows. I'm running the Tahoe developer beta, and in comparison to my Arm surface laptop 7, it's still light years better. I have no problems with Bluetooth, which is an endless struggle on Windows. I don't deal with windows update failures, windows installer service crashing and requiring a PC restart to install an MSI (happens constantly on the Arm devices), I don't have copilot being shoved down my throat, I'm not nagged to start an Office trial, or redirect my folders to OneDrive, or have ads in my app menu, etc.

Even Apple at its lowest is still a better experience than the alternatives because the alternatives just suck worse, and have chosen the path of data harvesting and monetizing the hell out of its user base over anything else.

Thats your subjective opinion based on what you do on a computer and how you like it to work. Thats absolutely fine, just dont state the like its a fact. The only real fact you can say is they both have pros and cons, and its up to each user to decide what their personal preference is.

Second (even though it's completely beside the point), especially Liquid Glass could be implemented in PWA, because it's a rendering effect the OS could put on top of appropriately tagged elements of the application. And voila, the same webapp could render in Liquid Glass in IOS26 and in less-gaudy Liquid Glass in IOS28, and meanwhile in no Liquid Glass at all on devices that don't have it...

His metric for "just works", like many users, is "works like Windows". Such a metric is inherently flawed because any piece of software will always come up second-best to Windows.

When he did his Linux experiment stuff, he approached everything with a Windows context. And, when things didn't work the same, he didn't sit back and say "hmm, is this new way of doing things better, or worse?". No, he immediately rejected it because it's not like Windows.

And look, I get it, it takes on the order of decades to learn an operating system inside and out. I still find Windows GUIs I've never seen before in my life. But the way he approaches software reviews is incredibly frustrating. He takes the most closed-minded mentality and then acts surprised when it doesn't work.

TANSTAAFL. User experience costs money. Privacy costs money. Not serving ads is an opportunity cost for more money.

Take away the app store royalties, and the obvious path forward for Apple is to compromise on the other legs of the stool.

Linux will never have the UX of macOS simply because a lot of what makes macOS great is boring and tedious work, and nobody does that for free.

Install and discoverability is still hidden. Push is gated behind install. Safari’s scroll bugs haven’t been fixed despite us extensively documenting them, emailing to Safari’s leadership and raising them every year as the number one bug.

The number one thing we’ve asked for is third party browser engines on iOS.

What goalposts do you think have moved?

I can get root access to my pixel.

I can replace the operating with an open source fork on my pixel.

Google is not using its monopoly on the hardware to get a monopoly on the software - they're competing on software primarily on its own merits and the convenience of being the default.

No other phone company that I know of even develops their own operating system.

Apple really is unique in their attempt to control the software that runs on the mass market general purpose computing devices that they sell.

Siri being bad is a huge flashpoint on this issue, and I think its causing far more negative sentiment than Apple will admit or even knows about. If they had any intelligence left in their leadership, they would have just paid ChatGPT $10B/year, wrote a nice system prompt, and that's Siri v3. They could have done that in literally 2023, keep investing in their own models, maybe come 2027 or 2028 flip the switch. Instead they went so far down the rabbithole of personal context that they built nothing, meanwhile there's intermittent reports on reddit and elsewhere that Siri has begun to lose the ability to even set timers for some people [1] (I have not ran into this issue).

My take is that we're going to see this sentiment get worse in Q3/Q4 this year when iOS 26 drops. Liquid glass is actually wildly divisive among the people I've shown it to and who are using the betas. Some people like it, but some people really dislike it. When you add that on to their other issues; I think overall the next two years are going to be pretty good for Samsung and Google.

[1] https://ethanbholland.com/2025/07/11/apple-has-lost-its-mind...

Then, among the developers I know, nearly none of them are actually writing apps for Apple devices, approximately half using MacBooks.