No Apple Intelligence or iPhone Mirroring in EU at Launch

What absolute wankers. Their pettiness knows no bounds.

John Gruber is getting ridiculous, too. Of course, laws have the same meaning here in Germany, too. So no, it's not the spirit but the letter than counts.

@B... ha ha ha... You made me laugh so loud.

Awful company. Run by awful people. Defended by equally awful people.

Gruber is crazy. How can he not see that Apple does the same shenanigans to App Store developers? How many developers decide to not develop for the App Store due to the uncertainty of whether or not their app will be approved, because Apple won’t actually say what the real rules are and applies rules inconsistently and often makes exceptions for mega tech companies but not indie developers?

@Ben I think Gruber knows that and has himself pointed out the irony.

If Apple was concerned about violating the spirit of the DMA they would not have come up with the Core Technology Fee.

That irony / dichotomy is pretty funny.

TL;DR: I think it shows up in lots of ways because of the differences in our laws from the EU.

What’s really happening:

Common law (USA, UK, Australia) - governed by laws (rules), litmus tests, judicial precedents. It’s bottom up. It’s like programming (and hacking). Great for business because there’s certainty and fast. Liability and enforcement is tort (damages)-driven. Good for neoliberal economies. It’s our superpower as an economy. Also why we have forever chemicals and uncapped oil wells.

Civil law (EU, most of the rest of the world) - governed by ideals and goals… top down. There’s lots of discussion about the goals - the whys - and maybe some examples, but justices make determinations on a per-case basis. Good for society, less good for business because outcomes are not as predictable. This is what needs to happen - you figure it out.

That’s what’s happening here. EU’s system is vague.. that’s how the system is designed. (Same with in China, BTW).

And that’s actually good in lots of ways. Maybe not as good for tech, or specific big tech companies who want the certainty they’re used to in the USA.

But DMA goal is to be good for local EU tech… and it makes sense why Apple’s changes aren’t good enough for the DMA commissioners.

Oh, and “the DMA rules”? The likely reason no one points them out in the bazillion articles and tweets is because the DMA is not rules based. It’s goals based. Fundamental confusion between US and EU systems. There’s no rule against a CTF, so there’s nothing concrete to point to.

It’s like porn. “I’ll know it when I see it”
https://history.wustl.edu/i-know-it-when-i-see-it-history-obscenity-pornography-united-states

The test and goal of the DMA is more access to the platform for local developers.. 3 or 4 alt stores with a few apps on each understandably sin’t enough to meet the goals of the DMA which is why the commission is threatening fines… but a good question is: is the solution really a null set?

Perhaps Apple can’t get paid enough for its IP and also give competition/equal access to the platform and be a pleasant platform to use - if that’s the case, Apple can choose to withdraw. And that’s what seems to be happening here.

Should Siri be replaceable by Alexa or Mistral? Should that app have access to a customers data? Do I get a “share my contacts, calendar, photos, mail, etc. with Mistral” confirmation dialog? For screen sharing, what if the other computer screen-scrapes? A windows app should be allowed to do so, I think, since Apple has no say in the matter. Also, what’s the requirements timeline before penalties kick in? And this is just scratching the surface.

And BTW, the App Store is very much a “civil law” type document, in my eyes. It’s goals based and rules will change as the world evolves, but the goals are the same. Often case by case basis. Frustrating for devs, but good for “society” (Apple and its customers)

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

It seems to me that Gruber doesn't know what a newspaper is: an entity which owes allegiance to its readers and provides them with stories describing reality as best it can rather than taking a side. He seems to think the FT is either on Apple's side, or on the EU's, hence the "kudos", the "of all outlets", and the "EU leaks everything to the FT". But it makes sense, since partisanship seems to be the essence of his reporting. Another sad case of projection...

> Civil law (EU, most of the rest of the world) - governed by ideals and goals… top down. There’s lots of discussion about the goals - the whys - and maybe some examples, but justices make determinations on a per-case basis. Good for society, less good for business because outcomes are not as predictable. This is what needs to happen - you figure it out.

I think this is a bit simplistic, to be honest. While concepts like stare decisis are indeed unique to common law systems, EU courts are nonetheless bound by precedent in practice, and legal decisions routinely cite past decisions. Also, common law is regularly replaced by statute law in all common law jurisdictions, and regulation in particular tends to be more based on statute than on case law.

(It’s not always relevant, but Apple’s EU subsidiary is based in one of the EU’s three common law countries)

It might also be about a bad business case for Apple Intelligence services in Europe. Apple AI likely requires substantial investment in cloud computing capabilities. EU customers are proportionally spending far less on services subscriptions than Europeans, which would make it harder to recoup this investment.

The EU can file this under the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The board has to start asking Tim Cook questions if they aren't already.

iPhone sales have collapsed in China and Apple can't risk a similar disaster in the EU. This seems like pure bullying, but bullying that poses a threat to iPhone marketshare in the EU. Apple is giving Samsung, Google and others a huge competitive advantage in the EU. Market research has already shown that AI features in the Samsung S24 are driving growth for the Samsung S-series. Stalling the rollout of Apple Intelligence in the EU is only going to make things worse.

The iDevice/Mac-wielding people that I have talked to in NL/DE since this news came out seem to unanimously think of this as Apple being a bully. This is not the Apple that people love.

@Dan

> EU customers are proportionally spending far less on services subscriptions than Europeans, which would make it harder to recoup this investment.

Doesn't explain iPhone mirroring, this is just Apple being petty. Hopefully one day they'll realize that they were in the wrong on this and we can go back to the Apple that increases revenue by bold innovation. (There still is plenty of bold innovation, but this makes people dread Apple.)

@Daniël

> Doesn't explain iPhone mirroring

It does not and it also seems completely arbitrary. Could be a very elaborate PR strategy though. Maybe in a few days or week, apple will announce that mirroring is coming in the fall after all, after constructive talks with the EU. Then they can say, we are acting in good faith, it's just the EU that's hard to deal with.

With Apple's AI, I think there are more fundamental reasons at play. Money, or technical hurdles to roll it out quickly.

AFAIR Apple said that Apple Intelligence will be US English Only with additional languages in 2025. And everybody shrugged.

Hence saying that Apple Intelligence will not come to Europe is basically them same. But now everybody is getting exited.

IMHO Apple is trying to weaponize something that they couldn’t do anyway as a threat. In order to get a better bargaining position with the EU

I’m baffled that people continue to give prominence to Gruber’s lapdogging blog, but then it occurs to me that since Apple’s own PR team doesn’t have a blog, maybe this is the next best way to capture that perspective.

Well at least, Apple was clever enough to provide an official statement. Because when it doesn't give a script to journalists, there can be surprises:

After WWDC, I heard a journalist (that was supposedly specially flied to the Keynote) reporting that Apple Intelligence is exclusively based on the partnership with OpenAI and that the iPhone will communicate with OpenAI servers all the time… That was money well spent by this media…

Steven Troughton-Smith: "Apple’s screen sharing being the only one with remote control is very clearly self-preferencing. iPhone Mirroring, though? Beats me." And @Daniël, @Dan...

I don't see how this is even a question. They're both the exact same thing: some form of VNC that is only accessible via Apple's first-party apps.

@Gerd: you might be shocked to hear that quite a few Europeans are able to speak English. For instance, the people who invented the language, and for whom it is named. But also most Scandinavians, etc. Even some Irish have managed to master it, like Yeats. (/s)

@Old Unix Geek: I've read a higher percentage of people in the Netherlands speak English than in the US…

20 comments! I need to say something too :-)

Apple makes this about the European Commission and a game of politics, but seems to forget the European CUSTOMERS. Europe is a big market, and I think it unwise to offend their values and play politics. The European Commission is not an autocracy. Overall as a body created by a democratic process, it represents the values of Europeans. A EU citizen will not look a this and think "too bad the European Commission has put these rules in place", they will see this for what it is and say: "What an awful and arrogant company Apple has become... let's look for alternatives".

I know this - because I am one.

"it would be recklessly irresponsible for Apple, or any other designated “gatekeeper”, to launch any new services or integrated features in the EU without absolutely certainty that those features are compliant with the DMA"

Yeah, "responsible" is definitely the word I would choose when describing how Apple is interacting with the EU.

Apple thinks this will make people more angry at the EU than at them. That's the reason.

"He seems to think the FT is either on Apple's side, or on the EU's"

He's projecting.

@Thomas
I’m an EU citizen too and I disagree with your analysis.
(as a proponent of democracy I’m sure you are aware it’s unwise to suggest that one person can speak for all)

This is a useful article on how democratic the EU and European Commission are. Seems like a balanced article by Alan Butt Philip; someone with a good understanding about such things.

https://theconversation.com/how-democratic-is-the-european-union-59419

Spoiler - in some ways yes but in other ways no.

This:
https://ianbetteridge.com/2024/06/22/apple-delays-ai-in-the-eu-maybe/

To be honest, I think the EU and the rest of the world should let the USA be the sacrificial Guinea pigs for all this AI stuff. You folks have real/better privacy/society protections. There are a lot of half-brained and really dangerous stuff going on. You’ll get the safe stuff once it’s proven out here. The precautionary principle is a good one.

Replicating and reinforcing biases, raising housing rents/collusion, tons of fake AI where humans secretly get to see your stuff. It’s the Wild West here and while that can be fun and grab the VC bucks, we love putting the consequences on others if it can make us a quick buck.

(Also, similar issues and new ones gonna happen in other big countries - China, Japan, etc. Censorship, IP infringement, etc. - it’s going to be an interesting decade)

@Old Unix Geek, @Alexander,

Yes most Europeans are able to speak English.

But looking at iPhones in Europe most of them are set to the native language of the owner of the phone as the first or only language.

Some but not all have set up a second language. Right now you have to manually switch the language while typing text on a iOS/iPhoneOS device in order to spell check against the English dictionary

Siri can only be set to one language at a time. You have to switch it via preferences.

So access to English as a second Language is cumbersome and only a fraction of the general population will jump through all the required hoops.

And still lots of texts are written in the native language and lots of words are spoken in the native language

@someone makes a good point. If a tech company is building something technical (as they do), they want exact specs to follow when it comes time to build it. You can be "goal oriented" with an algorithm to start, but once you start coding, you need to be precise.

It also makes sense for Apple to release this news to the Financial Times. If the EU/EC are going to make that their primary channel for such announcements, that's where people are looking, and Apple is wise to do the same.

Or, it could be Apple saying, "Want to know what happens when you come at me? F* around and find out."

@Gerd: If there's a will, there's a way -- Apple could make the settings for Siri to use English for advanced functionality easy to use if they wanted to. They obviously don't want to, and are happy to use the opportunity to blame the EU.

As to iPhone Mirroring... how come Teamviewer works in the EU? Let me think... Oh, yes, because Teamviewer is German and its development obviously did not run afoul of EU law, or it would have been banned. But Apple seems to believe people are mushrooms: they should be kept in the dark and fed bullshit. Again, Apple, if there's a will, there's a way.

Does that mean Xcode code completion won't be available for European coders?
Needless to say, though, nothing about Apple Intelligence has impressed me so far.
So I really do not care about the Apple echosystem anymore, and am personally moving away from it, bit by bit.

You all turn to government for everything, ignoring the fact that heavy-handed regulations will damage innovation by raising barriers to entry for new competitors, increasing compliance costs and creating more risk and uncertainty for innovators and investors. You all seem to think the EU is out to save you from big bad Apple, but in reality you’re cheerleading for a bunch of soulless, uncreative bureaucrats that don’t create value of any kind.

@Chuck:

What you say sounds good in the abstract. It doesn't work in practice because of human nature:

* freedom of circulation on roads requires regulation to prevent accidents.
* freedom of flying in the air requires regulation to prevent accidents.
* freedom of manufacturing requires regulation to prevent accidents, exploitation, and environmental destruction.
* freedom of free markets requires regulation to prevent monopolies.
* freedom of humans requires regulation to prevent slavery.

Why? Because human beings climb their own individual gradient of well-being, and not the communal gradient of well-being. If you win the hand of your most desired maiden, and that other guy didn't, you're delighted. Screw him! It's also why communism is a great ideal but fails for our species. It might work for some other species. Termites?

There's a reason why there are no unregulated markets.

Well, there are many reasons actually. Root cause is greed though.

@Chuck makes a good point though: The bureaucrats in the EU/EC have very little understanding and even less knowledge of these highly technical, highly complex areas that they're trying to regulate. A very small number of vocal and well-connected people are whispering in their ears, and taking on the "tech giants" makes them feel powerful.

And it's easy to cherry pick examples of things that definitely must be regulated and try to use those examples to prop up your reasoning for regulating this. But that doesn't make it true or valid.

What we are discussing is the EU preventing Apple's manipulations the 3rd party App market. Apps are goods produced by European and Foreign companies, and are no more special than potatoes. Regulating the availability and sale of such products in the EU market is 100% within their remit.

Indeed that's what most European countries wanted to join back in the 1970's: a "Common Market" (EEC). Apple benefits from said common market because it only needs to have one HQ in Ireland, instead of 27, and the relevant legislation is easier to cope with. Also it doesn't have to deal with 27 legal systems which in the old days were quite protectionist. (Fuck them Yanks, let's support our own computer makers).

No amount of whining that tech is "special", "different", "complex", "too difficult for you stupid politician", is relevant. You want to sell stuff in the EU? Obey EU law, or get out. This is literally the EU's core competency -- providing a market and ensuring competition within it is not distorted by large players. If they don't do that job, there is literally no point in having an EU. Apple won't win because markets are an existential concern for the EU.

If you want to attack the EU-crats for corruption, creating personal fiefdoms, trying to wrest more power from countries, being undemocratic, and getting involved in things that they have no business getting involved in, go ahead, be my guest. But markets ain't it.

If you're worried about vocal and well-connected people trying to regulate areas they don't understand for their own benefit, OpenAI's attempts at creating a legal moat around its supposed near-AGI concern me much more. In general, it's much more disturbing when powerful companies ask for regulation, than when they complain about it.

There is nothing highly technical about apples abuse of their market domination.

It's as old as the English East India Company.

Market domination of a market they created? The app market didn't really exist before the iPhone. 3rd party apps on the iPhone didn't exist before Apple made it happen. The same market that drove app pricing down through the floor.

Now excuse me while I contact Bose. I've been toying with a new sound format, and they need to bend over backwards and allow. me to install it on my Bose soundbar.

@DJ: What ridiculous historical revisionism. 3rd party Software existed before the App Store. It always relied on the existence of computers that were manufactured by someone else. The iPhone is just another computer, a programmable Turing Machine. Perhaps you should start the calendar at year 0, the year of the first iPhone, like North Korea did with its Juche year?

Obtuse much? I thought it was obvious that we're talking about the iPhone app market, but ok...

let "a market they created" = "the iPhone app market they created"
let "The app market" = "The iPhone app market"

@DJ, you're the one being obtuse.

According to your logic, if a new computer manufacturer takes over the computer market, they've created a new market for software, and have the right to run it as they wish, even if it eradicates the preexisting market for software.

You don't seem to understand that the market consists of software products made by people who wrote software for the previous hardware and now must write it for the new hardware because that's what now exists, is popular, and software doesn't run on thin air.

The Fraunhofer Institute doesn't get to decide it can regulate any use of the MP3 format it invented, and that the "MP3 market" is separate from the overall music market. But according to you, they should.

Ah, the "I am rubber, you are glue..." defense. Classic. :-)

So what hardware are you referring to that preceded the touchscreen smartphone and would now be ported to the iPhone if it were not for Apple's restrictive App Store policies?

Not sure what to make of the FI/MP3 line of thought. Something like, file format is to platform as leaf is to tree? I don't know, give me a bit...

@DJ: "Hardware ... that would now be ported to the iPhone?" Eh?

It sounds like the utterance of someone sozzled with Pyongyang Soju. Not much point continuing this discussion, since in your world, iPhones don't run software.

@DJ
Apps on the iPhone predate the App Store. The first developers relied on rooting the iPhone to gain access to the hardware to provide apps for the devices. Apple, the company you keep erroneously giving credit too, literally tried blocking all third party apps from the platform.

@DJ
Furthermore, many phones on the market already supported apps before there was ever an iPhone. I used to install apps on my feature phones, not even dealing with smartphones, Java ME was around for a pretty long time if nothing else. Apple didn't invent the market on their own device, let alone the market as a whole.

I wasn't clear in my last post, so that's on me. What I meant was that there is probably very little, if any, software from the pre-smartphone days that is waiting to be ported now, if only the App Store rules would allow it. Kudos to those who were able to jailbreak the early smartphones to add functionality. It was clear early on that this wasn't going to get very far though, since jailbreaking is also obviously a security vulnerability.

I know it sounds like I'm defending Apple in my responses to this and other posts. It's an Apple-ish forum though, so the focus is already there. I've had my run-ins with them over the years (anyone remember Podcast Producer?). But I believe that it's their platform, and they should be able to control the direction of it. I also believe that Microsoft was not wrong to include Teams in their Office suite, even though I've been anti-MS for most of my life. I try to be objective.

Once upon a time, phones, computers, etc. simply let you install apps, it wasn't a platform, it was merely a device (Sidekick was clearly a platform before anyone offers me that as a counter example, believe me, I know). Apple has twisted the narrative around general purpose devices to be "We own this, and only if you agree fully with everything we dictate may you can make software for it, if a developer, or use it for your computing needs, if a customer."

What happened to, you buy something and it's yours to use largely as you wish? When routers are more open than your computer platforms, you are simply doing it wrong. And yes, that's my opinion, but it's based on the decades of having the market be that way. I simply got used to the user owning the device, not the company who sold it to you.