Apple vs the Law

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?

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 I guess I am out of date on Pixels.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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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...

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.

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