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Apple vs the Law

(formularsumo.co.uk)
378 points tempodox | 3 comments | 11 Jul 25 06:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.639s | 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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Cthulhu_ ◴[11 Jul 25 08:15 UTC] No.44529557[source]▶
Big companies like that have a vested interest in paying their legal team A Lot Of Money to find stupid details like this and to argue the toss over them because a ruling can cost them billions. If arguing over a comma means they don't have to, or that it pushes the point where they have to pay forwards, it's worth the expense to them.
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amelius ◴[11 Jul 25 08:49 UTC] No.44529797[source]▶
It also costs them my trust, though.
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Zopieux ◴[11 Jul 25 09:09 UTC] No.44529942[source]▶
This happens in the confines of legal (EU, California, ...) institutions and courts with the occasional boring news reporting the average consumer doesn't read, like this article.

It's clearly a win for Apple.

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alt227 ◴[11 Jul 25 09:19 UTC] No.44530036[source]▶
More people are getting annoyed with Apple over these issues, and they are bleeding into the mainstream media more frequently. I have a few die hard Apple friends (Non-professionals) that have recently got so frustrated with being pushed into corners that they have given up the fruity ecosystem altogether.

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'.

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pjmlp ◴[11 Jul 25 10:01 UTC] No.44530364[source]▶
Apple has always been like this, they were only humble during the few years they almost went bankrupt and needed all the help they could get.
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1. alt227 ◴[11 Jul 25 10:07 UTC] No.44530395[source]▶
Not in the view of the general public. The 'colourful era' of Mac G3s, and fancy iPod ads went a long way into making the average consumer see them as trendy, cool, and disrupting the normal boring tech industry we were used to. That reputation got them really far by riding the wave into the launch of the iPhone.

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.

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2. pjmlp ◴[11 Jul 25 11:12 UTC] No.44530818[source]▶
That was exactly during the humble phase when the possible bankruptcy was still not yet fully sorted out.

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.

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3. alt227 ◴[11 Jul 25 11:46 UTC] No.44531046[source]▶
Yep, as I keep saying. They built a bit of good reputation by breaking the mold, so the average consumer thought they were the greatest tech company ever. As time has gone on the mask has started to slip and the general population are starting to see them for the big business they are.

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