European Commission Specification Proceedings

Apple should tell the EU/EC to pound sand.

@DJ on that subject opinions differ. For instance, I think that it is Apple and Google who deserve a real hiding. Splitting them up into tiny pieces would be a good start.

Understanding that bureaucrats gonna bureaucrat, one does begin to wonder whether the EC is just entertaining itself by seeing how far it can push Apple (and others) before the companies decide the market isn’t worth the hassle and just stop selling there. Or perhaps they think that if they make their market inhospitable enough to outside business, some European alternative will have space to emerge?

@OUG Split up Google if you want - their whole purpose for doing anything is to increase ad revenue for themselves. Leave Apple alone - the integration is worth it to me.

@DJ they're not against the device integration. They just that other devices are able to be integrated too. That's a huge win for the consumer, the right to choose whatever device (s)he likes.

Exactly. Just look at what's happening with NFC.

Apple can keep doing their good stuff.

Oh, I get that. But I still maintain that that is wrong. Apple developed all of this tightly integrated gear to work together on their platform(s), so why shouldn't they be able to keep it closed?

Because monopolies are anti-competitive and the EU's reason for existing is to foster a competitive market. (Naysayers like Gruber would say an uncompetitive market, but I digress).

I tend to support breaking monopolies since among other reasons, anti-competitive markets waste resources, which is environmentally unfriendly.

Apple is free to peddle its wares in other parts of the world where other rules apply instead of refusing to leave and refusing to accept that they are the guest outside of the US, and when in Rome it is polite to do as a Roman.

Yeah, how did that work out for the Romans? ;-)

Seriously though, Apple is not a monopoly.

If a company can't maintain an integrated product set to their benefit, what is there incentive to innovate? To do all the work and then let others come in and benefit?

Actually you'll find that Congress' relevant subcommittee decided it is a monopoly back in 2020. Things haven't gotten any better since.

That's an interesting read, but it's not much more than a list of accusations from bureaucrats. The true test of all of that will be in the courts.

Regarding Apple, they say that the company has monopoly power over iOS devices. That's like saying SpaceX has monopoly power over SpaceX rockets.

The old canard that “competition is efficient”. Like, what??

Competition is super wasteful.

That’s why mergers — that is, reducing competition — is always followed by layoffs — reducing redundancies increases efficiency (up to a point… usually to 4-5 competitors, then efficiency, depending on what you’re measuring… profit or price, goes up/down)

@Someone else
That's emphatically not why companies lay off employees after a merger. Are you a lobbyist by trade, perhaps?

@Old Unix Geek “when in Rome it is polite to do as a Roman.”

Reality of consumer electronics is for regular consumers doesn’t matter which system they use. They don’t understand it nor care anyway. Except for the number of cameras, alleged “speed” of the “cpu” and color painting of the case perhaps. Per se this is a tragedy already with important implications for the environment. For more technically inclined people is much more complicated but I beg to disagree vertical integration lead to a much better, albeit humanely imperfect, experience than with Android. Or with Rome for who knows how it really is to live in the Eternal City. Let’s also not forget the hideous Google stranglehold on anything privacy preserving. What users want to endure while in that side of the market used to amaze me.

For me the EU, who pushed the equivalent of a SCART connector on smartphones letting the populace believe it will fix “sustainability” issues, should not be trying to pry open a platform while using Google’s Android as a blueprint. Minimum common denominator. If consumers want Android it is available for purchase already. For as low as a handful of euros. Twenty percent, on average, of europeans choose otherwise. How is this not a “free” market already. Choice between two. Easy. Rome or Zurich.

Of course EMPs may just prefer a free flow data harvesting, inferior solutions they can directly tap in to. But are not telling.

Nah, it's fine. Interoperability is neither a threat nor intrinsically going to result in an inferior experience—that's just silly fearmongering. More likely is that regulators will make performative—and often poor—choices because the monopolists won't do the decent thing and move on their own. Which is a real shame, and highlights the essentially top-down nature of political deal-making, but is still infinitely preferable to cosy capitalism for the few and miserable concessions for the rest, even when the notional experience is better when you have nowhere else to go, in the short-medium term. That's just not healthy and there's no room for things to improve when so much power is vested in so few hands.

Competition does reduce resource usage and does cause other improvements over the long term. It's why our cars are more efficient, and indeed why we ourselves have evolved. In the short term, there is some energy wastage as people try blind alleys, or waste resources working around anti-competitive measures, such as patents. The Soviet Union or China before Deng Xiaoping are examples of what happens without competition. Central planning was good for raising people to a basic level of industry, catching up so to speak, but then it stalls. Deng realized this, and famously said "It does not matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mouse".

There is no reason that phones must act like Apple or Google's. The EU is run by people who want more competition, and they're doing it through regulation. I think they'd be better off helping their own industry to develop rather than flogging it off (EU's Nokia or UK's Psion were sold to US corporations and killed) and perhaps applying mild protectionism. It seems to be what China is doing with its "Made in China" initiative, and they're doing well.

By the way, Apple's claims to require unique cabling infrastructure to provide a better customer experience are pretty dubious given that it's still shipping product that can only move data at year 2000 speeds. It seems more likely that they see no reason to invest in that feature, since making it slow pushes more people to using Apple's online Services. If the EU required competition for services, we might have better USB-C speeds.

@Wu Ming
If USB C is equivalent to SCART, then why was Apple already using it for all their Mac laptops and some of their iPads? Let's he honest, USB C is better in most ways over Lightning, as seen by Apple's own adoption previous to the DMA. The real sticking point was Apple demanding the huge licensing cut for Lightning accessories and not wanting to abandon their tax. This really isn't as complex as single source consumers are making it.