EU Fines Apple and Meta Over DMA Violations

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Cook and co have been stacking up raffle tickets for years—I suspect this is just the first of many draws.

Good. Apple and “Meta” have both been flouting the law and hopefully this will send a message

Ahh I see Gruber has now progressed from arguing that Apple wasn't in breach of the law, to the law is bad / broken, to just saying it's a cost of business, and Apple should remain a criminal enterprise, pay the fines and ignore laws 'MURICA doesn't agree with.

The Venn diagram of Gruber and MAGA is basically a single circle when it comes to Apple.

These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.

-Anacharsis

That White House quote that Gruber is endorsing regarding "Extraterritorial regulations that specifically target and undermine American companies" is just chef's kiss given that the US love that kind of thing.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/new-us-rule-foreign-chip-equipment-exports-china-exempt-some-allies-sources-say-2024-07-31/

This is no way to curry favour with Trump‘s America, Brussels. Stop quaffing your champagne and woofing down your oysters and fight, can’t you? Competition *can* be important, but it most certainly isn't *everything*.

@Someone Yes, I believe he also suggested that the genocide in Gaza were Palestinians "fucking around and finding out". I really think we must put the delightfully inaccurate political descriptor "moderate" to bed.

"someebby" is, of course, me, Sebby. The capital indicator, dot 6, was misrecognised by the new-and-improved Braille Screen Input as dot 5, and dot 5 followed by S is "some" in grade 2 Braille. So I apologise for getting my handle wrong in my previous comment. Michael, please feel free to fix (and, if you like, delete this comment).

@Someone Distressing as it may be, I think Gruber is correct that Apple sees this as just a cost of doing business and/or a problem the US government can solve for them. There’s a long corporate history of acting like the rules don’t apply. Steve Jobs parked in handicap parking spaces for decades and had no license plate to try to avoid the fines, paying them when necessary without altering his behavior. John Sculley was kind of the mirror of Tim Cook, switching teams and donating to Bill Clinton when it looked like the Democrats would be more favorable to Apple and Silicon Valley interests. He got the seat of honor at the State of the Union, and the administration heavily invested in technology and reduced regulations that got in the way of selling products overseas.

Yes, John Gruber's go-to first response to any foreign country enforcing its laws is always brain-dead US trade war. “Why are we doing business in the EU?” Who said the following, Gruber or Trump: “Laws like this are protectionist attacks that specifically target two U.S. companies — Apple and Google. The United States should treat this as a trade war, and reciprocate by passing legislation mandating third-party game stores and payments on game consoles from Sony and Nintendo. See how they like it.” He's forever been anti-everything-China (“The fact that TikTok is owned and controlled by a Chinese company is reason enough to be suspicious, and in my opinion reason enough to ban the service.”) and anti-Chinese (“You’re folding it Wong”.).

Gruber is a steadfast supporter of genocide who calls student letter signatories “left-wing nuts” who “should be expelled from college, not placated.” “This whole operation sounds like it would make for a great movie” he says admiringly of an international Israeli terrorist attack; the final scene of his fantasy movie would probably be Trump winking at Netanyahu while being presented with a golden pager trophy a la Han to Leia at the medal ceremony in Star Wars.

For all Gruber's shallow proclaimed "resistance" he's MAGA without the red hat, and only because Apple doesn't sell him a branded version yet.

With respect to the CTF "But how did we arrive at this situation where Apple built and shipped something and a year later the preliminary view is that it’s not compliant?"

I don't find the CTF being found non-compliant that surprising, nor is it too unclear what Apple has to do.

Apple has two sets of terms and conditions that you can agree to, in one set of terms you get the CTF, in the other you do not. As the EU has said, "Developers wanting to use alternative app distribution channels on iOS are disincentivised from doing so as this requires them to opt for business terms which include a new fee (Apple's Core Technology Fee)." In theory the exact same App can be subject to the fee or not depending on which terms they agree to and this is clearly abusing their position to maintain their power over developers.

@Benjamin I don’t find it surprising either. My point is, what did Apple do it this way? My assumption is that they knew all along it probably wouldn’t fly but were trying to drag out the process or hoping for a change in the winds. Why didn’t the EC say something sooner—or did they, in private?

Was my comment too inflammatory?

@vintner Akismet thought it was spam, probably because there were so many links. The Israel/Gaza stuff is off-topic.

"This novel form of economic extortion will not be tolerated by the United States. Extraterritorial regulations that specifically target and undermine American companies, stifle innovation, and enable censorship will be recognized as barriers to trade and a direct threat to free civil society."

Sure… but then why are the United States specifically targeting Google, Meta and Apple through antitrust cases or investigations?

@vintner: Gruber’s entire brand proposition, the reason why he is considered a thought leader in the tech blogosphere, is supposed to be that he has special insight into the consumer electronics space. And yet, the profound implications of the Israeli pager attack for that segment of the economy, and for all of our lives, obviously did not occur to him. Instead to him, it was something cool out of a movie. He’s not a serious person.

Here’s an analysis of that subject which is very much worth reading and giving some thought to:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10767427

@Someone Yes, when political commentators outside the US say the US is "protectionist", this is what they mean; the US is good to its own people when it suits their own interests, but they are (or, really, now, were) a big fan of laissez faire and "free trade" in its dealings with the rest of the world. This is a feature of imperialism, obviously, but it's always faintly amusing to hear those comments, especially juxtaposed with those from *inside* the US from those who believe the US isn't laissez faire enough with its trading partners. If you are an American, you probably should be counting your blessings, unless you are poor, in which case you should probably be mobilising and protesting the people who have written you off.

What I don’t understand is why Apple is refusing to see that the market today is very different from the market in the 2008.

Instead of having a flat developer fee they should start differentiating between the developers based on company size.

The really big companies can work out who pays who what based on what they each bring to the table.

The mid sized companies pay Apple something like 10-20% of what they charge customers.

The flat fee can continue for small developers and hobbyists who build apps for themselves.

Then we won’t need separate app stores and all this mess can go away.