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Apple vs the Law

(formularsumo.co.uk)
377 points tempodox | 1 comments | 11 Jul 25 06:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.212s | 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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vladms ◴[11 Jul 25 08:15 UTC] No.44529561[source]▶
For me personally they seem to be more expensive than competitors and have a more aggressive stance on openness (ex: compare PWA support on Android vs iOS, not to mention the multiple other things like no multiple stores, the browser engine discussion, etc). So, I am not amazed that people think "on top of all the other things that you annoy us with you also try to avoid the law?!".
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1. carlosjobim ◴[11 Jul 25 15:21 UTC] No.44533184[source]▶
Openness is not a concern for the people who buy Apple devices, and probably not for the public at large. It certainly is no concern to me, I need a machine which works so I can get stuff done. For a MacBook that means opening the lid. For a Windows laptop that means plugging it in, opening the lid, waiting for half an hour for the system to update while it is unusable and hogging all the bandwidth at this time, etc.

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.