Who would’ve thought? This isn’t going to fly with the EU.
Article 5.3 of the Digital Markets Act (DMA): “The gatekeeper shall not prevent business users from offering the same products or services to end users through third-party online intermediation services or through their own direct online sales channel at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper.”
Friendly reminder that you can sideload apps without jailbreaking or paying for a dev account using TrollStore, which utilises core trust bugs to bypass/spoof some app validation keys, on a iPhone XR or newer on iOS 14.0 up to 16.6.1. (ANY version for iPhone X and older)
Install guide: Trollstore
Top comment by Chris (@SwiftySanders@urbanists.social) Liked by 7 people
I think all these changes that the EU is doing really only benefit large development firms like Spotify and Epic at the expense of the smaller developers. EU is adding additional regulations and requirements from Apple which smaller developers and indie developers will now have to comply with which will act as barriers to entry for some. That’s bad for competition…which I think was ultimately the goal for Epic and Spotify.
I love this braindead take regurgitated again and again and again. The DMA specifically does not apply to anyone smaller than a big monopolistic company. Apple barely made the cut themselves. The whole regulation is about forcing six companies - the Act only applies to them at all - to open up their walled gardens because they are strangling their respective markets and killing innovation, consumer choice and competition.
That is hilarious that they expect iOS users to pay a fee to sideload apps. Like comically evil.
I don’t pay anything to side load apps on my phone.
Probably bc I switched to Android.:-)
And I am never ever going back!
You sound like one of those people who said they’d move to Canada when Trump got elected the first time, and didn’t.
It’s not the users they’re charging, it’s the developers. Instead of having to pay 30%, they’re asking for 27% if they’re selling their app side loaded.
Defeating the whole purpose.
This was how it worked for years for developers. First step of testing your app on an iOS device you have is to pay Apple a developer fee. This has been a thing even back in iOS 3 times.
Is it just a one time fee? And what were you paying for, testing to see if it qualified for the app store?
Seems like sideloading would be a different path and goal unless Apple is trying to retain control of that too. To me a lot of the point of users sideloading is to load whatever they want, not what the corporation that made the OS will allow.
I don’t think that’s true at present. You can do it with the free account to sign builds for your own devices. If you need to run a build on a device that isn’t your own, you’ll need a developer account to get a certificate to sign your builds. It’s not great but you don’t have to pay to test your own app out on your own devices.
The only way it could work out badly for smaller software developers is if companies like Apple decide to recover their losses by charging heavily for development tools and resources.
If they can’t have walls around app distribution they might try and put them around app development instead.
They’ve been doing that since the beginning. You need a “developer license” in order to publish an app. Back in the day it was like $50 a year I think, but I haven’t done ios dev in about a decade so I don’t know if that’s changed.
App developers add value to their platform, any wall erected there would be torn down in moments. It would be biting the hand that feeds
You are both correct. They do stop things that would be ok, on say, a windows machine. For example, intercepting text messages at the system level. It prevents a lot of mischief but also stops legitimate software.
But we can already look at the Android market for guidance on what will happen. Few Android users venture out of the official store. It will take a large company with must-have apps to get people to go to another marketplace. Like Steam, Epic, or Facebook. Companies that either want to keep their cut or want to collect data to sell. This will likely not matter at all for small developers. They don’t have the clout.
There is one aspect people don’t really talk about yet, because it is not just about “allowing sideloading”. The law says “no self-preferencing”. That means that installing an app from for example F-Droid has to take the exact same amount of taps with the exact same UX as installing something from Google Play. Same goes for the App Store. The point is not to allow sideloading, but to erase the word sideloading from the vocabulary of the platform and make it just like Windows in that regard.
This is not just bringing iOS to where Android is, Android is still not compliant yet either. Neither is Windows by the way, because of how they treat Edge.
Not even just that, you have to have at least 7.5B EUR turnover or 75B EUR market cap, AND 45M end users AND 10k business users AND keep this up for 3 years.
And even then it’s not automatic, you get nominated and get arguments, and only then you have to follow it.
I mentioned the six companies because they are the only ones that this currently applies to, and that will be the case for the foreseeable future as well. And even from them, it’s specific products. MacOS is not in scope for example, despite iOS being scoped in.
MacOS is not in scope for example, despite iOS being scoped in.
But is MacOS as much of a walled garden than iOS? Not in the slightest, right? I’m fairly certain you can install random software on MacOS can’t you?
It’s brain dead because it’s a kneejerk response without anything backing it up.
EU regulations have a massive positive day-to-day effect on my life. It’s not like they get everything right, but on the grand scale, it’s working better than any other regulatory system I know.
@maynarkh You think app store policies and eu legislation only impacts you. 🤣
Large companies sponsor regulations all the time in an effort to make it harder for the smaller players or just plain greed.
Apple alluded to this in court that implementation of the and that the end result would absolutely be worse for smaller players than what was there before. Welp! 🤷🏾♂️ Smaller player gets screwed.
https://x.com/nikitabier/status/1750592825060921353?s=46&t=kj2zDgWA66Lbbc0rNac6uw
I fucking hate Apple with a passion.
Edit: many people seem to be a bit confused. I don’t own any apple garbage, and never will. I’ve only had an iPhone back in 2016 for a little while then replaced that shit with a pixel 6p. I don’t buy shit that makes my life difficult.
Why? What have they done to you? If you don’t like their products, simply don’t buy them.
It’s not that simple.
Blue chat boxes affect everyone. RCS is a stepping stone but my daughter wouldn’t be caught dead with a green chat box. Tell me how that isn’t Apple using their dominance to prevent other players?
FaceTime (which they PROMISED to open up but never did) affects everyone.
The FaceTime software, would have done plentiful towards the industry & others, if it became open sourced.
But nope, they decided to make it exclusive for only within the Apple product bubble. Now we are supporting with so many video apl software/ tools. It’s just fragmented. It’s okey with competition but this is far too much. Also the quality, safety have lessoned.
sounds like your daughter is a typical sheep - perhaps THAT’S the issue you ought to try having an issue with rather than a company doing normal business.
Blue chat boxes affect everyone
How do they affect you if you don’t even have an iPhone? You’ll never see those blue bubbles.
Besides, the defacto standard for chat apps is WhatsApp, hardly anyone uses iMessage anyway.
FaceTime (which they PROMISED to open up but never did) affects everyone.
This was due to a patent lawsuit. Blame VirnetX, not Apple.
Who would’ve thought? This isn’t going to fly with the EU.
Article 5.3 of the Digital Markets Act (DMA): “The gatekeeper shall not prevent business users from offering the same products or services to end users through third-party online intermediation services or through their own direct online sales channel at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper.”
Apple has an annual legal budget of approximately infinity dollars. I assure you they are aware of this and they believe they are in compliance, even if just barely.
If challenged, they will have no problem fighting it — they have nearly as much cash on hand as the entire EU budget.
I hope the EU challenges this, and I hope the EU wins, but Apple isn’t going to be surprised by whatever happens.
The fine would be approximately 10% of Apple’s total revenue and the fine increases by 10% every violoation so I doubt that Apple can not accept the regulations.
Unfortunately, Apple has the resources, both legal and financial, to tie that up in the EU courts for decades.
Apple has also been known to ignore laws and pay fines for breaking them. The store is a major revenue stream so they might just do that.
Yup. If the only penalty is a fine, and that fine doesn’t scale to the business’ profits? A profitable enough business could simply factor in the fines as a cost of doing business.
Imagine you could make $1000 and only get fined $200 after the fact. No extra penalties. Just a flat $200 fine for every time you violate it. So as long as you expect to be able to top that $200 fine, a business will elect to just pay the fine and continue doing the illegal thing.
There’s the letter and there’s the spirit of the law. Even if Apple has found a brilliant loophole the courts can just say well it’s technically true but you’re still breaking the law nonetheless, lawyer budget be damned.
The EU court is a Roman court, not an Anglo Saxon court. The spirit of the law is what matters, not the technicalities.
Second, the EU can change the laws that create the outcome they don’t like. By the people, for the people. Apple will play within the EU’s rules or Apple won’t play in the EU.
I‘d be really surprised if Apple tried that.
They have to know that it violates the DMA. And the penalty for violating it can be up to 10% of their yearly worldwide revenue (not earnings!) for the first violation and up to 20% for repeated violations. I don‘t think they‘d risk that, especially as the EU really isn’t known for its leniency when someone intentionally breaks their rules.
On the positive side, those fines could fix the finances of a few smaller EU countries in a single sweep.
I’m not too sure that these actions violate the letter of the law here, even though I agree that they’re 100% in violation of the spirit of the law.
It’s been some years since I’ve put the mobile development world behind me, in no small part because of Apple’s shenanigans, but the way I understand how this might work - Apple may be required to allow “iOS software” to be installed from third party stores, but software that runs on iOS must either be signed using a certificate that only allows installation in a developer or enterprise context (which require explicit and obvious user consent to that specific use case, and come with other restrictions such as the installation only lasting for a limited period of time), or through an “appstore” certificate that allows installation on any device, but the actual application package will need to go through Apple’s pipeline (where I believe it gets re-signed before final distribution on the App Store). All certificates, not just the appstore ones, are centrally managed by Apple and they do have the power to revoke, or refuse to renew, any of those certificates at-will.
If my understanding is correct (I’d appreciate if any up-to-date iOS devs could fact-check me), then Apple could introduce or maintain any restrictions they please on handling this final signing step, even if at the end of the day the resulting software is being handed back to developers to self-distribute, they can just refuse to sign the package at all, preventing installation on most consumer iOS devices, and to refuse to re-issue certificates to specific Apple developer accounts they deem in violation of their expected behavior. I haven’t read the implementation of the DMA in detail, nor am I a lawyer, so I’m not sure if there are provisions in place that would block either of these actions from Apple, but I do expect that there will be a long game of cat and mouse here as Apple and the EU continue to try and one-up the other’s actions.
But the article of the DMA says that the gatekeeper shall not prevent the business user to serve their product using other conditions than those of the gatekeeper’s platform. I think that would include Apple’s publishing guidelines.
I think that’s the rub, in my theoretical scenario, Apple is not blocking the distribution or sale of iOS applications through third-party means, they’d enforce their existing restrictions on and power over building iOS applications in the first place. Developers would absolutely still be able to distribute unsigned applications - end user iOS devices would just be unable to install them.
It sounds ridiculous to me, and as I wrote earlier, it would be a clear violation of the spirit of the DMA, but I don’t see any reason why this scenario would not be technically possible for Apple to pull off.
Your description matches my understanding of the process (as someone who left iOS development a few years ago).
I don’t think that the DMA is technical enough to differentiate in this precise manner. Keep in mind that it was written by lawmakers and politicians who mostly don’t know how to even use a smartphone. They’d think that a certificate is a piece of paper with fancy signatures on it.
I could be wrong on this, and don’t know all the details in the case, but EU-law is often interpreted teleologically, meaning in a way that is the most in accordance with the objectives and goals of the legislation. So in this case, if Apple is in violation of the spirit of the law, the EU Courts would likely rule against Apple. (source: 1st year law student)
Those who buy apple products deserve each other.
Exactly my thoughts. “Let’s jailbreak this, bypass that, circumvent that one thing…” Why do you subject yourself to this with a device you paid hundreds of dollars for?
As much as I’d like to have an iPhone, I’d rather not.
As an aside, it’s the same thing with game consoles. Is the whole “you must be connected to the internet” thing still happening? That’s what has been preventing me from getting a new xbox, for example.
Steam Deck is pretty awesome in the offline gaming regard, if that’s what you might be looking for.
Uh, it’s actually quite the opposite, most games you need to at least open them one time while connected to the internet for offline to work.
I remember way back when I had my iPod Touch 4 (haven’t touched Apple since then) that I (intentionally) jailbroke it simply by tapping a button on a website in Safari. It was an exploit that used a bug in iOS’s PDF software, I believe.
Honestly? Nothing. People just say this kind of thing because we like to tinker with our devices. If what you bought satisfies your needs and you don’t need more, that’s just ok. Android/windows/linux has a lot more conveniences for my use, so that’s what I go for, but not everyone is the same
Android/windows/linux has a lot more conveniences for my use
That’s kind of my point. I don’t get the aggression people have for someone using different brand.
A MacBook is the only Apple product I’m happy with cause it’s actually open in terms of being able to install any app I want and modify some things like how windows are managed.
Come back when you have a problem with your keyboard*, or your drive, or charging issue. Repairability is downright bad now.
I like OSX well enough.* I like the form factor of the MacBooks now that they have escape keys again. It’s been 9 years since they made a MacBook that was reasonably decent to work on from the inside though. Even swapping a broken screen out is* like 3 hours now.
I’v been using mac books over a decade so not sure when I need to come back here. I was unhappy with the usbc only mac book pro and considered switching but the m1 fixed issues i had, so I’m here again. Just imagine that there are people out there who don’t care to much about repair-ability.
There are 3 kind of people when talking about Apple: 1- fanatics who support Apple, 2-fanatics who hate Apple and think you cannot like it, 3- and finally those who just look at the product without thinking about the brand but what you can do with the product (if it suits your needs or not). It seems like you are that third kind of person.
Don’t get people that upset by using microsoft or google products. It something about apple that makes people quite unhinged.
