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Apple vs the Law

(formularsumo.co.uk)
377 points tempodox | 4 comments | 11 Jul 25 06:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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EMIRELADERO ◴[11 Jul 25 07:51 UTC] No.44529425[source]▶
The greatest gem is found in the footnote, IMO

> "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...

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jb1991 ◴[11 Jul 25 07:55 UTC] No.44529447[source]▶
I am certainly not surprised that Apple is employing a lot of legal tricky to work around judgments. But what does surprise me is that there’s a very common attitude in forums that somehow Apple is the only company doing this, or they’re doing it worse than any other company.
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LoganDark ◴[11 Jul 25 08:11 UTC] No.44529534[source]▶
> But what does surprise me is that there’s a very common attitude in forums that somehow Apple is the only company doing this, or they’re doing it worse than any other company.

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.

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1. culturestate ◴[11 Jul 25 08:40 UTC] No.44529730[source]▶
> You cannot buy a device with entirely Google-designed hardware and software - Pixels with Android come close

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?

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2. KoolKat23 ◴[11 Jul 25 08:46 UTC] No.44529771[source]▶
You can still install Huawei market place or Fdroid marketplace and sideload all the apps you want. And it's easy to do.
3. LoganDark ◴[11 Jul 25 09:10 UTC] No.44529956[source]▶
> 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.
Android is more of a collaboration than Apple's entirely in-house. (Technically Apple's current generation of operating systems traces back to NeXTSTEP, which itself traced from some other things, but it's still had much cleaner provenance and been much more tightly controlled than Google's continuous conglomeration.)

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

4. ◴[12 Jul 25 01:27 UTC] No.44538507[source]▶