Third-party accessories like smart watches will be able to receive notifications from the iPhone
This seems incorrect, or at least misleading. I have always (since I switched to iPhone in 2020) been receive notifications on my Garmin Fenix watch. In fact, the only problem I have with notifications is that I have no ability to blacklist apps from notifying on my watch, and its all or nothing. This is a huge downgrade from Android, and I wish whomever is responsible could fix that.. That's probably my biggest annoyance with my iphone.
That’s a rather silly view to take. We have a phenomenon called “the first mover advantage” for a reason.
Plenty of other markets and businesses operate just fine while operating in an environment that makes protecting individual innovation functionally impossible. Just look at any related to fast fashion (not that I think the fast fashion market is a healthy phenomenon) or any commodities market. Or for that matter, most of the software industry.
The incentive for creating features should be to remain relevant and competitive. It shouldn’t be to build moats and war chests.
I would agree in general, but in this specific case it’s still an advantage for the iOS platform in general. It just removes a buying incentive for the AirPods.
The general problem is that there must be a line.
Vendors don’t create lock-ins because they are malicious, they create it because it makes them money.
Now, if we limit these lock-ins, it will reduce their ability to make money and yes, it will impact some features - short term.
But looking at it long terms, vendor lock-ins are actually a reason to stop innovating: your customers are locked in anyway.
So, overall, I would say this is good for innovation in general.
I actually have a problem with this. I want AirPods to be undeniably the best experience for me because I am fully locked into the Apple ecosystem, and I know many folks have complaints against that. I find it to be rather pleasurable to use compared to all the other alternatives out there. So if I have to start sacrificing my experience in favor of universal support, that really sucks.
But this isn't sacrificing your experience, you're free to keep using your Apple AirPods with the quality and reliability you'd expect from Apple. This just means other brands can create products with similar features to AirPods, and if they're not as good or reliable, well that's why you're paying Apple for theirs.
the long term innovation outlooks are still better, so you benefit long term as well.
It’s just less obvious / measurable that immediate benefits.
And also, short term, isn’t it that other EarPods are getting better, rather than AirPods getting worse?
Medium term, I don’t think that Apple will stop innovating on AirPods just because of the EU market and this one feature not being exclusive to AirPods anymore. But it’s a possibility, I agree.
Your tortured argument tests credulity and is pretty much opposite of how actual markets work.
In this case, stopping Apple from degrading competitor products means they can compete on a level playing field and Apple will need to create better products to maintain a lead. Their ability to degrade competitor products has nothing to do with the features or quality of their headphones but rather that they control a closed platform. Thus the EU's action in maintaining fair competition.
isn't this comment ironic though, given that the EU didn't create iOS or Android despite having an early advantage in the 2000s (Symbian was pretty popular for a hot minute)? given the number of now huge startups founded by people who left the EUs as adults my assessment is that the EU is doing it (software industry) wrong - at least by revenue generated and size and size of industry
Are we learning the wrong lessons? Integrated always works better than modular components. Here, Apple is being asked to enable their versions of software for third party devices, which do not have the same hardware assumptions as Apple did. (Apple will not release the exact hardware spec for airpods anyway). This means the newer version will be designed modularly, with some tradeoffs to enable the "same" kind of access to third party. Then there is a caveat that it there is even a bit of experience change from 1st party to third party access, it will be complained about and investigated. so, the way fwd is designing with third party in mind, and that almost always leads to bloat and substandard experience for end user.
Probably better would have been just simpler access, even if not the integrated experience like. But that would lead to complains from third party manufacturers.
The lesson being learned is that Apple could’ve avoided all this trouble if they had used or produced standards for the connection between their components. The whole concept of a gatekeeper was created in response to Apple-likes being difficult and simply hostile to interop opportunities even though they’re defacto the phone company and there is no way around them.
So if the solution is not optimal, that circles back to Apple who are responsible for coming up with a solution that works. Then choosing to prioritise platform lock-in is a business strategy, leaving regulation the only recourse.
A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.
My contention is this: expecting a third party provider to be able to provide the same experience as the first party is an impractical goal. Even pushing companies towards that means a lot of second order effects where everyone ends up like Intel or Windows for that matter. We already have android on that level.
You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone. But clearly the directive here is that Apple's competing products should not be better based on better integration, which can only go in one direction. Apple degrades its own products to comply. Yes, competition wins, but consumers lose. In this case specifically - consumers who would want to choose Apple, better experiences would not be able to simply because Apple cannot ensure the level of software/hardware alignment as it works today if the same software is written with modular hardware in mind.
> You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone.
This is what the requirement is. The EU isn’t demanding that Apple provide the same experience for 3rd Party and 1st Party products. It only requires that Apple allow 3rd Parties access to the same capabilities as 1st Party products, so 3rd Parties could build 1st Party quality experiences.
Nobody is asking Apple to degrade their own products. They’re just demanding that Apple don’t artificially degrade other people’s products.
> That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.
This is the only point of discussion here. Because all the EU requires is that Apple open up their internal protocols so others can implement them.
> A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.
I disagree, this is not a given. Usually the opposite is true.
Meaning, properly designed APIs and protocols for public use are more robust than one-off private protocols. Because there are expectations.
Apple could be malicious and make the API stupid, but if they were genuine then they wouldn't. They would make a good API, which is much more likely, I think, when the API is public versus some secret private API.
> Meaning, properly designed APIs and protocols for public use are more robust than one-off private protocols. Because there are expectations.
This is the polar opposite of my experience. Whether it's Bluetooth, PDF's, or a web audio JavaScript spec, actual products are plagued with inconsistencies and incompatibilities, as they implement the spec in different ways or brand A has bugs that brands B, C and D need to write special code for to get interoperability working. And brand C has other bugs brands A, B and D now need to also handle.
Whereas private protocols are much more likely to just work because there's only one implementation. There are no differing interpretations.
There is no “produced standard” to allow three Bluetooth devices - each headphone and the case - to register as one Bluetooth device or to automatically register a Bluetooth device to all devices using the same cloud account.
Big disagree that integrated always works better than modular writ large, but in any case maybe they could just hire this guy to do it? https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods
Its mostly true when the integrating company cares for the user experience. Which apple clearly does.
The example you shared is the opposite. I am imagining a kernel today written in a manner that airpods would be able to use it to extract the max out of it. Now, it has to support 10 other third party pods, so at the minimum, kernel would be more generalized.
Recently bought an apple watch for my mom and got it set up with her iphone. Almost instantly she notices that she cant accept WhatsApp calls on her watch, and after looking into it I found out that it was another one of those apple things where they assume youre obviously using facetime so that functionality isnt available for any other app. For context, in europe Whatsapp is the dominating messaging app and alot of people use it for calling as well as messaging. The apple watch is, as far as I can tell, a simple Bluetooth wearable with a speaker and a microphone, so the only reason its like this is that apple has a concept of how the device is "supposed" to be used and only lets you use it that way. After that experience I fully support all the regulations the EU is putting on apple to open up.
Seems like you’d just need to set WhatsApp as the default calling app on iOS and make sure to install WhatsApp on the watch too. The ability to set another app as the default for calls has been around since early this year. Doesn’t this work?
Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Third-party app calls don't go to the Watch. It's so annoying, I have to tell people to call me using regular phone calls or FaceTime instead of using Signal or WhatsApp because I always miss the latter ones.
I was genuinely sure it’s not a problem, as I personally know quite a few people who do that. But I think they use either FaceTime or regular cellular. That’s sure weird a simple call does work in iPhone 4S (imagine a price for it in 2026), but doesn’t on modern Apple Watch Ultra, which is quite expensive.
Three months ago a commenter here on HN claimed to me that this will be bad for Apple users:
> There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have. If the third party device doesn’t work people will blame Apple even though it’s not their fault.
And, competition probably can’t build for it anyway:
> It’s impossible to build Apple Silicon level of quality in power to watt performance or realtime audio apps over public APIs.
And:
> […] Apple has to sabotage their own devices performance and security to let other people use it. The EU has no business in this.
Well, I look forward to next year when we’ll have the receipts and see!
Apple can't perform well with audio on Apple Silicon, either. In 2025 macos is the only OS with audio cracking appearing with CPU load. Even Linux is better
Yeah, this is a regression since macOS Tahoe.
Amazing that it still exists after several patch releases, is audio working not a basic test case for Apple?
I’ve found it to be worst when using Xcode / simulator and having headphones on for music.
sudo killall coreaudiod seems to fix it for a while.
I don't think it's CPU-based, but I've always had an issue with my AirPods Max on my iPhone with audio cracking (my AirPods Pro work fine, and the Max works fine with my Mac)
It's bad because Apple now has to (OFFICIALLY) support a wider range of devices.
And then there is less incentive for Apple to further improve this interface because any improvements will benefit non-Apple devices (i.e. do the foundational work but everyone else gets the positive exposure)
You mean it will benefit Apple’s customers, who prefer headphones not made by Apple? If only the incentive for Apple to improve their interface was that its paying customers will have a better interface.
I really don't understand people who defend Apple on this. The only reason I can imagine is that they're shareholders who don't use any Apple products, or shareholders who use exclusively Apple products and can't understand what sort of poor scrub might want an accessory not made by them.
I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence.
There are many reasons to criticize Apple, but wanting to not only control the exceptional ecosystem where everything just works as seamlessly as possible, but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me.
What I don’t think dawns on people is that this is an example of an intersection between what some call capitalism and communism mindsets, or it may be far more accurately described as the ants and the grasshoppers, the freeloader problem.
People like the iPhone for its having worked extremely hard to make its devices work really well, but those same people don’t understand how and why that behavior they like actually came about, so they start trying to “improve” things they don’t have the foggiest understanding about.
It’s a typical narcissistic type behavior and mindset of self-importance, that now that the hard work has been accomplished they’re here to take over and improve things they don’t understand and weren’t involved in creating.
It seems to be a mindset that totally infected and is spreading all throughout the whole West for whatever reason. People simply have no idea how what they inherited was created, let alone even know how to keep it going, not to mention fix anything.
Just alone the fact that it’s EU bureaucrats imposing these things makes it extremely unlikely that it is a good idea, considering not a single consequential tech company has been produced as a function of the EU. It is that obnoxious EU technocratic know-it-all hubris that keeps them even understanding just how little they actually know, which is so dangerous and reeks of malicious jealousy.
At least in the USA, the idiots in Congress are accountable to a constituency that elected them, and they tend to be able to discern that they simply don’t know enough to interfere with how Apple (for example) is doing what it does to produce the world’s best devices and services.
Not the EU and its blob of unelected bureaucratic despots and unelected Commission of dictators, it is confident it knows more than Apple about how to do what all of Europe cannot seem to actually accomplish. Europe has not even been able to emulate what the Asians have done by forking Android, but here they are, wagging their fingers telling people how it is. Why do Europeans not get tired of that pathetic attitude?
Frankly, I wish Apple had the non-binary balls to simply just cut off all iPhones in Europe rather than bend to EU despot dictates.
At least I can hold onto the gleeful spite that Apple may just use this as an opportunity to push people into buying more Apple products by demonstrating that, e.g., “your use of non-Apple headphones has caused your phone battery to drain 10% faster and damaged the battery by 5%”. It’s perfect advertisement… brought to you by the idiots in the EU bureaucracy playing tic-tac-toe strategy against grand masters.
Your whole post is an ignorant, ugly and hate filled rant of little value, but I will pick out this one trope:
> Not the EU and its blob of unelected bureaucratic despots and unelected Commission of dictators
EU haters have two complaints, that it is unelected and that it takes away sovereignty, yet it consists of the members of national governments that not only elect the various officers of the EU (including the Commission) but also vote on all major decisions of the EU, as well as the directly elected EU parliament. So in fact the EU preserves both sovereignty and the votes of EU citizens, both member governments and citizen representatives must approve all EU actions.
It's a little complicated sure, apparently too complicated for some to understand.
> I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence.
So do I. And my >20 years in the business gives me the experience and knowledge to see through Apple’s FUD.
> […] but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me.
It is my device. I paid for it. If Apple thinks they deserve more money for what they did they are free to ask me, the customer, for more money.
> […] unelected bureaucratic despots
Aha, the dog whistle of the AfD brand of conspiratorial bullshit ”unelected” nonsense! Career bureaucracy is supposed to be certified and educated, not elected, because that is the only way they can properly implement the laws of the electorate. Bureaucracy still answers to elected officials, but they are supposed to act without political interference and provide specialist knowledge. For the same reason you do not vote on every captain and colonel in the military hierarchy, or every tax collector/auditor in your IRS equivalent, you do not vote on every bureaucrat in the Commission tasked to execute and implement law.
> Frankly, I wish Apple had the non-binary balls to simply just cut off all iPhones in Europe rather than bend to EU despot dictates
Perhaps you should come back when you’re less emotional. Suggesting incredibly poor value for shareholder decision while also being hateful (non-binary balls, indeed) is showing the whole ass. Never go whole ass.
You're getting downvoted but it's absolutely true that people simply don't want to (or are incapable) of considering second and third order effects that arise from applying interventions on systems that they do not understand.
non-apple headphones work just fine with Apple products. In fact, Apple's bluetooth stack seem to work best among all the portable devices I come across (no random droppings, connects on first try etc.)
They have nifty apple-only features, like you can hold them close to the iPhone and they'll pop up and pair with a neat UI.
It's mostly gimicky, but it does give the user the impression that the apple Air pods are higher quality because they have all these things thought out. In actuality, Apple just made it so they're the only ones who can do that.
My iPhone has plenty of trouble connecting to various devices at times. God forbid it has to manage connecting to my car and my headphones at once. It works OK most of the time, but at least once a week it proves to be a problem.
I was unconvinced till I switched my devices, one by one, to Apple products a few years ago. They really do just work, especially with specification abiding devices.
Currently, on the AirPods side and not iOS side like the article covers, Apple breaks Bluetooth feature parity with other devices by not sticking to the Bluetooth spec with AirPods themselves.
For example, you need to root and patch your Bluetooth stack on your phone if you want to use all of your AirPods features on Android, and not because Android is doing something wrong, it's because the Android Bluetooth stack actually sticks to the spec and AirPods don't.
And even when you do that, you can't do native AAC streaming like you can with iOS/macOS. Even if you're listening to AAC encoded audio, it'll be transcoded again as 256kbps AAC over Bluetooth.
Even no name earbuds on Amazon manage to not break Bluetooth and can offer cross platform high quality audio over Bluetooth.
On the other hand, there’s been a bug open to make a simple harmless change to fix this in Android for 9 months, with no response from Google other than asking for reproduction steps as far as I can tell.
They do this on purpose if you didn't get it. Google will never "fix" this issue because they follow the spec. They shouldn't have to add an exception for AirPods.
> Google will never "fix" this issue because they follow the spec. They shouldn't have to add an exception for AirPods.
This seems to go against how OS development (and perhaps consumer software in general, just think about browsers!) works in reality, it's just piles of exceptions on top of exceptions for weird hardware.
Even no name earbuds on Amazon manage to not break Bluetooth and can offer cross platform high quality audio over Bluetooth
That's because they're all based on a small set of BT SoCs from companies who are not exclusively dependent on the Apple ecosystem and need to interoperate with everything BT-compliant.
Yes, this is called Bluetooth multipoint and has been common on non-Apple devices (for example Bose) for a few years now. Requires no logins and is vendor-agnostic.
I can stop music on my phone and immediately listen to music from my laptop. I have non-apple headphones, a non-apple laptop and an iPhone. There is no apple magic dust that makes this happen.
Waiting to read the news that this unblocks all functionalities in the re-pebble so I could finally purchase one that fully works with iPhones. Way to go EU!
Let’s call them bureaucrats, but let’s not forget that their baseline is to be public servants, while that of product managers is to increase profits :-) . I think the system is working as intended though, because increasing profits can be a great driver for innovation and service to the consumer, until it’s not and the “immune system” (the bureaucracy) must be called on to fight the uncontrolled pathological growth…
Brussels primary interest is the process, not the people.
If you don't think there isn't any "uncontrolled pathological growth" anywhere in the EU, then you should look at ALL OF THE LEGALLY SANCTIONED GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES HERE.
> ALL OF THE LEGALLY SANCTIONED GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES HERE.
This is the kinda claim that really needs citations, and ideally some commentary on how the examples demonstrate the point you’re trying to make. Otherwise it’s impossible to reply to, and just comes across a little shrill and conspiratorial. Which I don’t think is your goal.
So this tap to pair won’t work in the US? The side loading stuff I can understand to restrict to the EU, but this just seems like a nice feature for everyone
They even restrict "letting you choose the default maps app" to jurisdictions that legally require it (EU and Japan), there is literally no justification for that other than "we want to increase KPIs for our shitty Apple Maps app by making people accidentally open it", it's an extremely basic toggle that pretty much any user of Google Maps would prefer.
If it were, they wouldn’t be asking. And you haven’t answered it either. Your parent comment is asking why the grandparent commenter thinks it makes sense to restrict third-party stores to the EU instead of having them everywhere.
I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users.
Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good for users. Companies either become dominant, or universally screw over their users. Users either have no choice, do not understand the choices, or simply don't care.
I am glad the EU tries to do something. They aren't always right, but they should be trying. As a reminder, one of the biggest success stories of EU regulation: cheap cellular roaming within the EU. It used to be horribly expensive (like it is in the US), but the EU (specifically, Margrethe Vestager) regulated this and miracle of miracles, we can now move across the EU and not worry about horrendous cell phone bills.
Gruber’s take on the USB-C stuff has been hilarious.
All through that fiasco, where Apple was going through all sorts of twists and turns to avoid switching to USB-C, which was objectively better even if you’re an Apple partisan (given that I could carry a single charging cable for my Mac and Samsung phone, but not for my Mac and iPhone), he was going on and on about how the EU was killing creativity by forcing Apple to do something they didn’t want to.
And then Apple relented, their USB-C iPhone saw some of the fastest growth over a previous model despite having minimal other upgrades, indicating significant pent up demand for a USB-C phone.
And I’m guessing at this point even Gruber can’t imagine living life with a Lightning charger, so now the tune is that Apple was planning on switching to USB-C and they were playing a game to make it like like they were forced to switch by the EU so as not to alienate their current Lightning charger fans.
It’s a patently ridiculous idea but it’s necessary given how badly wrong he was on this issue because of how badly he continues to misunderstand how the EU works (which isn’t anything like how the US govt works).
> All through that fiasco, where Apple was going through all sorts of twists and turns to avoid switching to USB-C
Is there any evidence that "Apple was going through all sorts of twists and turns to avoid switching to USB-C"?
Apple worked to create the USB-C standard, was among the first to widely deploy it.
Apple fighting against a precedent where the EU would force them to switch everything to USB-C is strictly different from Apple going through all sorts of twists and turns to avoid switching to USB-C.
They also capped credit card fees at 0.3% in 2015. It also included a prohibition on discrimination against any merchant based on eg size or category of goods sold. And as far as I can see neither Mastercard nor Visa had problems staying in business.
Yes! I forgot about this. The EU Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) effectively eliminated the high fixed minimum fees that previously made small-value card transactions unprofitable for merchants.
The net effect of this is that in Poland, for example, you can carry your phone and no wallet, because you can pay literally for everything using your phone. And I do mean everything, I've recently been to a club in Warsaw and the cloakroom had a terminal mounted on the wall, people just tapped their phones.
So you cannot compare it apples to oranges. There is much more regulation in EU.
In EU there is also more consumer protection by default, so charge backs can be rejected by merchants but a consumer can easily take a merchant to court. So capping card fees is also more reasonable.
Also, when a merchant goes bankrupt and customers perform charge-backs it would involve the entire payment chain. First merchant reserves, then acquiring bank, then MasterCard/Visa, then issuing bank (customer), and lastly the customer. With lower card fees, this has impact on the merchant reserves and their risk profile. Furthermore, acquirers can add additional fees on top if needed.
You can also get lower card fees in US if you have a low risk business model.
> You can also get lower card fees in US if you have a low risk business model.
It is only the maximum fee that is capped (along with various provisions for eg transparency). You can also get lower fees in EU, just twenty minutes ago I saw an ad for just such a zero-fee card.
His business is too tied to being in Apple's good graces anyway to take him that seriously these days. In the past he's been given access well above a lot of bigger outlets and way above what a blog that size should have especially when most of his social media output is now on mastodon to an audience the fraction of his X size.
All though I would say EU regulation has far more misses than hits, this and forcing Apple to USB-C were great but millions of man hours a year are burned navigating cookie banners on every website and chat control being forced through soon.
So we have two wins on iOS device convenience, not a great trade off for the other overreach.
You realize he just famously got in Apple’s “bad graces” this year with his “Something is rotten in Cupertino” post and for the first time in a decade they didn’t make an Apple executive available to be on his post WWDC live show?
Let’s not forget also that the EU first wanted to standardize on micro USB.
> were great but millions of man hours a year are burned navigating cookie banners on every website
Cookie banner are not, in fact, an obligation under GDPR. All you need to do to be GDPR compliant is “not collect and sell data to partners” and call it a day. Cookie banners are a loophole that the EC conceded to an ad industry that is addicted to tracking everyone all the time.
It's a totally reasonable position that both regulation and companies exploiting users are wrong. And it's also entirely a moral assertion that markets should resolve to outcomes judged by members of some political apparatus. Likewise, the idea that a third party should interfere with economic relations between two consenting parties is also a moral judgement, not an absolute fact.
Most arguments in favour of regulation cherry pick what they feel are success stories and ignore everything else. Interfering with highly complex and dynamical self-regulating systems has a cost. There are many examples of regulation leading to negative outcomes, and it's also telling that large corporations push for regulation because it's one of the most effective obstacles for competition in a market.
Free market absolutists don’t know what they are talking about.
The actual originators of market capitalism, most famously Adam Smith, but also proponents like Milton Friedman, had no such confusion.
In reality, today’s free market absolutists don’t get their ideas from economists (even free market economists). Instead, they get their ideas from terrible mid 20th century novelists (I’ll let you figure out who I’m talking about), who didn’t know much about how anything worked, never mind economics.
What is the point of responding to someone if you're going to completely ignore everything they say? Serious question, I'm curious what compels you to do this. Especially in such an arrogant and condescending way.
What you said is a bigger fantasy than the complete history of fundamentalist Marxism. There are precisely zero examples of a Laissez-faire economy succeeding in the real world. It is a wholecloth fiction.
If you'd like to reconsider your stance from a realpolitik perspective, it might clarify the parent's response.
Can you be specific about what I said being a complete fantasy? I feel like you're trying to extrapolate some view of economics onto me when I was making the point that there are reasonable arguments that can be made against government intervention. Or is that it, you don't even think a reasonable argument can be made? If so I would call that ideological, not reasonable.
Markets depend on regulations. You can make any case you want, but you must acknowledge this root fact if you are discussing real-world capitalist policy. Otherwise you are advocating to change a system that does not exist in real life, or reflect any modern economy anywhere on the planet.
Your claim that the parent ignored everything you said is bad-faith and objectively wrong. They are critiquing your attack on regulation and pointing out that reality works in the opposite way. Case in point, you have no bombshell argument against regulating Apple in this instance. You cited no real-world examples and gestured at generic and irrelevant anti-regulation boogeymen. Then you used ad-hominem to attack them instead of refuting the point they made.
The notion that I'm the one arguing in bad faith is laughable. Nobody has actually addressed any of the points I brought up, instead defaulting to assertions that regulations are necessary and thus I'm "objectively wrong". This is not how you foster good discussions - you need to be willing to listen and address the opposing viewpoints that are brought up. If I wanted to do the same thing you are doing, I would simply assert that "Markets don't require regulations" and I've made an argument of equal strength, but of course a meaningless one.
If you're actually interested in having a discussion it would be worthwhile to explain your reasoning behind why you think markets depend on regulation. I can think of a few good arguments for that position, because I'm capable of considering multiple perspectives and I'm actually interested in having a debate. You seem more interested in shutting down opposing viewpoints and bullying the other participants into submission.
Right, but regulations are necessary. And ideological opposition to regulation, as a concept, in inherently wrong and always will be.
Some regulations are good, some are bad. In order to have a free market, you MUST have some regulations. It's not optional.
The reason is simple and intuitive - if you don't regulate the free market, it will just make itself un-free, which is what we're seeing with Apple. You need to actively push back against that.
The reason is all free market players, no exceptions, have the utmost fundamental incentive to make the market non-free. Everyone, all the time, is devising new and innovative ways to make the market they control non-free. Because this is how you maximize revenue.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
Yeah, all too often discussion devolves into a religious war between free markets and regulation. Like they're somehow opposing forces. Markets are super cool and useful tools. Some regulation is good, some is bad, which exactly is which depends on your values and what you want to optimize for. Framing markets like they automatically do good, or ideas like "we need more regulation" or "we need fewer regulations" are all thought-terminating.
So far the DMA seems like a partial-win for technology users. I wish it enshrined the right to run software on your own computer in less ambiguous language, because as-is there are carve-outs that may let Apple get away with their core technology fee and mandatory app signing.
Yesterday, I was trying to get a voice memo out of my Apple watch - on which the recording was made. I switched from Apple last year. My cousin had an iPhone. Apple would not let me transfer the voice memo out of their eco-system. It's not on my iCloud and the watch can no longer be paired with any other iOS device (even temorarily with authentication to transfer a file)...unless the iPhone is registered to me. This is malicious compliance in the name of security.
And mind you, I own 3 Apple devices - 2 Macs and 1 iPad and the watch can't connect to any of those. I must be forced to buy a $1000 device just because I made the mistake of recording something on their watch. We need more regulation because of things like this and I would absolutely hate to live in a society where this is the norm.
If you are not using iCloud, you could try activating it (you get 5 gigs for free IIRC) and switching off everything besides the Voice Memos app. Then you should see the recording on your Mac, and should be able to export it from there. Definitely a shitty workaround, but you might be able to make it work?
Oh exactly, it's great to have a single cable / charger for many different items in the household.
The biggest downside I see with USB-C in this case is that the cables and chargers get quite expensive if you want to be able to just grab one and charge stuff, without having to worry about wattage etc.
All in all a big improvement, with some future improvements left to make.
Fingers crossed for a more sane USB-D in twenty years.
Even the most maligned lids attached to bottles looks stupid for 5 minutes but have the nice side effect of not having to hold the lid while you drink, which makes things easier most of the time you're holding something else
I don't think it's as black and white as you suggest.
He just wrote about Japan's implementation of a similar set of laws rather favourably - the theme is that Japan's implementation looks very much like a genuine attempt at protecting users and benefitting end users and developers.
While I don't agree with what a lot of what Gruber has to say. A point I do agree with is that the DMA is being sold (by Margrethe Vestager, Thierry Breton and Ursula von der Leyer) as a set of consumer protections, when it's plainly not that, and in some clear ways does the opposite.
There's also persistent transparency questions like why the EU has excessive meetings with Spotify, or why there is not a "music" gatekeeper in the DMA, or the requirement to easily move music libraries between music services - things that would actually help consumers and prevent genuine lock in.
(Note this isn't to excuse the behaviour of big tech.)
The only example he gave where the MSCA is better than the DMA is:
> E.g. apps distributed outside the App Store in Japan still require age ratings. There’s no such requirement in the EU.
Most of his description of what Japan does better is simply “mutual respect”. Which reinforces the idea that this isn’t about the actual practical differences but about ego. Apple hates how the EU forces them to make change.
And Apple has done this before. After the EU forced them to make a change, which emboldened other nations to push similar changes, Apple points to those other nations’s obviously more streamlined law making process (given that the EU has already gone through the hard work of drafting the law, working with a non-cooperative Apple, and then actually seeing it implemented and the practical issues that arise), to justify their hostility to the EU’s trend setting efforts, without which those other nations would almost certainly have not proceeded.
I bet if Japan’s MSCA had come before the DMA, Apple’s tone towards both those governments would have been reversed.
Great, now let's stack what you've written in both of your comments directly against what Gruber has written, and not what an imaginary strawman wrote.
You wrote:
1. I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad.
2. The EU has already gone through the hard work of drafting the law, working with a non-cooperative Apple, and then actually seeing it implemented and the practical issues that arise.
3. Most of his description of what Japan does better is simply “mutual respect”.
Addressing point 1 (again):
I wrote words to the effect of (they're just above): Gruber's writing is not as black and white as you assert and then I made reference to the Japan regulation article as an example where Gruber again makes nuanced arguments towards regulated changes.
That article does not make a blanket statement that regulation is bad, and Gruber points to a long-standing idea that he has which neither the EU nor Japan have regulated, which he believes should be. He's also stated (repeatedly) that he's in favour of link-outs and other commonly requested changes to the app store terms, and believe's Apple are too slow to change on these.
So does Gruber believe all regulation is bad as you have asserted: no. His views are demonstrably in favour of well-minded regulation.
Addressing point 2: The belief that the EU bears the brunt of regulation teething, and that's why it goes well in other regions.
Maybe you skipped the part where Gruber points to a 2021 regulation requirement from Japan, which Apple in fact did not provide resistance to, but worked with the regulatory authority to achieve their goal - then Schiller himself (the overseer of the App store at the time) came out and spoke in public with supportive language.
That is an example Gruber provided, however there are plenty more examples of the app store changing policies long before the EU took notice. The EU gets all the attention here because they seem to be uniquely incapable of foreseeing unintended consequences.
So is the EU's leading the source of friction. No and they're not even first in many respects.
Addressing point 3: Gruber makes only immaterial "mutual respect" comparisons between DMA/MSCA.
I'm guessing you skimmed this bit too - Gruber talks at length to MSCA and DMA's approach to regulation, stating that MSCA's changes prioritise privacy and security in contrast to the DMA, and practical aspects such as user safety (that's a wee bit more than "mutual respect"). Secondly that users are not presented with onerous choice screens (see end note 1) which is making reference to the EU's requirement that browser selection screens must be repeatedly shown when the user's default browser is Safari (but not if it's any other browser), Japan doesn't take this approach to a browser selection screen.
So is it true that Gruber makes immaterial comparisons between the two: again no.
Got a MacBook for work recently, paired it to my AirPods I had for months, and it was funny noticing you could enable FindMy for them from the settings but they wouldn't show up in my devices on the map. Indeed, for this you need to pair with an iPhone or iPad. However it did enable the beacon on the airpods as the next day AirGuard notified a device was following me. And since, I can't disable it, the switch in the settings doesn't disable the beacon AirGuard still detects them. Even within their ecosystem they'll punish you for not being fully "part of the familly".
Depending on how you look at it, there may be two distinct parts to this:
a) API to not just read notifications but also perform the notification quick actions (if any), e.g snooze for a calendar event, mark complete for a reminder, and of course reply for a text (SMS or otherwise). This seems entirely reasonable and ludicrous that it doesn't exist.
b) API to access SMS / Messages. That one appears to be heavily guarded because security / E2E (for iMessage).
I mention b) because a lot of times people invoke the problem a being b) (and possibly a problem in its own right, forcing one to use Messages for SMS) but really for watches a) is sufficient and probably much more relevant.
There's also a.1) API access
to media (images) in notifications.
In any case, DMA could definitely help crack both.
I mean I’d settle for the status quo and Garmin itself not deleting big parts of my watch faces.
The last update from Garmin did this to my Epix. Funnily enough the complications can still be activated if you touch the screen, they’re just invisible.
Yeah this would be weird if it's only for EU based companies. I think apple strategy is overall 'divide and conquer' making all different stuff working different in EU, Japan, UK, US. To this already many variables also if the user has account in EU and also if is living in EU or for how long. Their whole compliance is not robust and reliable making this in fact dead on arrival. Any maker relying on this will have more complains from customers. Customers will think that all non-apple solution are buggy and reliable and will stick with apple stuff.
> I think apple strategy is overall 'divide and conquer'
I think Tim Cook’s strategy is rather “hoard and extract as much money as legally possible, no matter what it does to the experience”. Selling tech products is no different to him than selling car parts of frozen meat. What matters to him is the pile of money at the end.
Considering how aggressive they’ve been about internet legislation lately, mandating age checks and asking companies to give them keys to encrypted data, I think I’d rather them not rejoin just yet, we don’t need another country trying to force Chat Control and making it worse.
Likely not. FTA: “The changes to proximity pairing and notifications are only available for device makers and iPhone and iPad users in the European Union.”
Wow, it's almost as if regulations were necessary to curtail the worst excesses of capitalism and steer it towards user interest instead of maximal exploitation...
Third-party accessories like smart watches will be able to receive notifications from the iPhone
This seems incorrect, or at least misleading. I have always (since I switched to iPhone in 2020) been receive notifications on my Garmin Fenix watch. In fact, the only problem I have with notifications is that I have no ability to blacklist apps from notifying on my watch, and its all or nothing. This is a huge downgrade from Android, and I wish whomever is responsible could fix that.. That's probably my biggest annoyance with my iphone.
It’s fascinating the kind of cool features we can have when products are made to be useful, with their target user in mind. Go EU!
This is like giving credit to the toddler who cried for macaroni rather than the mom who made it for him. lol
Or it disincentivizes creating those features, if you must give it to your competitors.
That’s a rather silly view to take. We have a phenomenon called “the first mover advantage” for a reason.
Plenty of other markets and businesses operate just fine while operating in an environment that makes protecting individual innovation functionally impossible. Just look at any related to fast fashion (not that I think the fast fashion market is a healthy phenomenon) or any commodities market. Or for that matter, most of the software industry.
The incentive for creating features should be to remain relevant and competitive. It shouldn’t be to build moats and war chests.
"plenty of other markets" have way smaller margins and are not nearly as robust an industry as software.
I would agree in general, but in this specific case it’s still an advantage for the iOS platform in general. It just removes a buying incentive for the AirPods.
The general problem is that there must be a line.
Vendors don’t create lock-ins because they are malicious, they create it because it makes them money.
Now, if we limit these lock-ins, it will reduce their ability to make money and yes, it will impact some features - short term.
But looking at it long terms, vendor lock-ins are actually a reason to stop innovating: your customers are locked in anyway.
So, overall, I would say this is good for innovation in general.
I actually have a problem with this. I want AirPods to be undeniably the best experience for me because I am fully locked into the Apple ecosystem, and I know many folks have complaints against that. I find it to be rather pleasurable to use compared to all the other alternatives out there. So if I have to start sacrificing my experience in favor of universal support, that really sucks.
But this isn't sacrificing your experience, you're free to keep using your Apple AirPods with the quality and reliability you'd expect from Apple. This just means other brands can create products with similar features to AirPods, and if they're not as good or reliable, well that's why you're paying Apple for theirs.
Is there anything that makes you believe they'll sacrifice quality to have universal support?
the long term innovation outlooks are still better, so you benefit long term as well.
It’s just less obvious / measurable that immediate benefits.
And also, short term, isn’t it that other EarPods are getting better, rather than AirPods getting worse?
Medium term, I don’t think that Apple will stop innovating on AirPods just because of the EU market and this one feature not being exclusive to AirPods anymore. But it’s a possibility, I agree.
Your tortured argument tests credulity and is pretty much opposite of how actual markets work.
In this case, stopping Apple from degrading competitor products means they can compete on a level playing field and Apple will need to create better products to maintain a lead. Their ability to degrade competitor products has nothing to do with the features or quality of their headphones but rather that they control a closed platform. Thus the EU's action in maintaining fair competition.
Bro, market is there to benefit consumer first, not to make money for shareholders.
isn't this comment ironic though, given that the EU didn't create iOS or Android despite having an early advantage in the 2000s (Symbian was pretty popular for a hot minute)? given the number of now huge startups founded by people who left the EUs as adults my assessment is that the EU is doing it (software industry) wrong - at least by revenue generated and size and size of industry
Last time I checked the European Union was a political construct and not a phone manufacturer.
Are we learning the wrong lessons? Integrated always works better than modular components. Here, Apple is being asked to enable their versions of software for third party devices, which do not have the same hardware assumptions as Apple did. (Apple will not release the exact hardware spec for airpods anyway). This means the newer version will be designed modularly, with some tradeoffs to enable the "same" kind of access to third party. Then there is a caveat that it there is even a bit of experience change from 1st party to third party access, it will be complained about and investigated. so, the way fwd is designing with third party in mind, and that almost always leads to bloat and substandard experience for end user.
Probably better would have been just simpler access, even if not the integrated experience like. But that would lead to complains from third party manufacturers.
The lesson being learned is that Apple could’ve avoided all this trouble if they had used or produced standards for the connection between their components. The whole concept of a gatekeeper was created in response to Apple-likes being difficult and simply hostile to interop opportunities even though they’re defacto the phone company and there is no way around them.
So if the solution is not optimal, that circles back to Apple who are responsible for coming up with a solution that works. Then choosing to prioritise platform lock-in is a business strategy, leaving regulation the only recourse.
A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.
My contention is this: expecting a third party provider to be able to provide the same experience as the first party is an impractical goal. Even pushing companies towards that means a lot of second order effects where everyone ends up like Intel or Windows for that matter. We already have android on that level.
You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone. But clearly the directive here is that Apple's competing products should not be better based on better integration, which can only go in one direction. Apple degrades its own products to comply. Yes, competition wins, but consumers lose. In this case specifically - consumers who would want to choose Apple, better experiences would not be able to simply because Apple cannot ensure the level of software/hardware alignment as it works today if the same software is written with modular hardware in mind.
> You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone.
This is what the requirement is. The EU isn’t demanding that Apple provide the same experience for 3rd Party and 1st Party products. It only requires that Apple allow 3rd Parties access to the same capabilities as 1st Party products, so 3rd Parties could build 1st Party quality experiences.
Nobody is asking Apple to degrade their own products. They’re just demanding that Apple don’t artificially degrade other people’s products.
> That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.
This is the only point of discussion here. Because all the EU requires is that Apple open up their internal protocols so others can implement them.
> A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.
I disagree, this is not a given. Usually the opposite is true.
Meaning, properly designed APIs and protocols for public use are more robust than one-off private protocols. Because there are expectations.
Apple could be malicious and make the API stupid, but if they were genuine then they wouldn't. They would make a good API, which is much more likely, I think, when the API is public versus some secret private API.
> Meaning, properly designed APIs and protocols for public use are more robust than one-off private protocols. Because there are expectations.
This is the polar opposite of my experience. Whether it's Bluetooth, PDF's, or a web audio JavaScript spec, actual products are plagued with inconsistencies and incompatibilities, as they implement the spec in different ways or brand A has bugs that brands B, C and D need to write special code for to get interoperability working. And brand C has other bugs brands A, B and D now need to also handle.
Whereas private protocols are much more likely to just work because there's only one implementation. There are no differing interpretations.
There is no “produced standard” to allow three Bluetooth devices - each headphone and the case - to register as one Bluetooth device or to automatically register a Bluetooth device to all devices using the same cloud account.
Big disagree that integrated always works better than modular writ large, but in any case maybe they could just hire this guy to do it? https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods
Its mostly true when the integrating company cares for the user experience. Which apple clearly does.
The example you shared is the opposite. I am imagining a kernel today written in a manner that airpods would be able to use it to extract the max out of it. Now, it has to support 10 other third party pods, so at the minimum, kernel would be more generalized.
A company that produces a wireless mouse that charges upside down really does not care about user experience.
Recently bought an apple watch for my mom and got it set up with her iphone. Almost instantly she notices that she cant accept WhatsApp calls on her watch, and after looking into it I found out that it was another one of those apple things where they assume youre obviously using facetime so that functionality isnt available for any other app. For context, in europe Whatsapp is the dominating messaging app and alot of people use it for calling as well as messaging. The apple watch is, as far as I can tell, a simple Bluetooth wearable with a speaker and a microphone, so the only reason its like this is that apple has a concept of how the device is "supposed" to be used and only lets you use it that way. After that experience I fully support all the regulations the EU is putting on apple to open up.
You can accept calls on the watch from Telegram.
So this sounds like a “whatsapp didn’t want to do it” more than a “Apple disallowed it”
Seems like you’d just need to set WhatsApp as the default calling app on iOS and make sure to install WhatsApp on the watch too. The ability to set another app as the default for calls has been around since early this year. Doesn’t this work?
Huh, with CallKit’s existence I would have assumed any app using CallKit would work on Watch…
Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Third-party app calls don't go to the Watch. It's so annoying, I have to tell people to call me using regular phone calls or FaceTime instead of using Signal or WhatsApp because I always miss the latter ones.
I was genuinely sure it’s not a problem, as I personally know quite a few people who do that. But I think they use either FaceTime or regular cellular. That’s sure weird a simple call does work in iPhone 4S (imagine a price for it in 2026), but doesn’t on modern Apple Watch Ultra, which is quite expensive.
Three months ago a commenter here on HN claimed to me that this will be bad for Apple users:
> There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have. If the third party device doesn’t work people will blame Apple even though it’s not their fault.
And, competition probably can’t build for it anyway:
> It’s impossible to build Apple Silicon level of quality in power to watt performance or realtime audio apps over public APIs.
And:
> […] Apple has to sabotage their own devices performance and security to let other people use it. The EU has no business in this.
Well, I look forward to next year when we’ll have the receipts and see!
Apple can't perform well with audio on Apple Silicon, either. In 2025 macos is the only OS with audio cracking appearing with CPU load. Even Linux is better
Yeah, this is a regression since macOS Tahoe. Amazing that it still exists after several patch releases, is audio working not a basic test case for Apple?
I’ve found it to be worst when using Xcode / simulator and having headphones on for music.
sudo killall coreaudiod seems to fix it for a while.
> sudo killall coreaudiod seems to fix it for a while
For me this fixes it for about 30 minutes then I have to do it again… and again… and again…
I wonder why some folks need to do it more than others
I don't think it's CPU-based, but I've always had an issue with my AirPods Max on my iPhone with audio cracking (my AirPods Pro work fine, and the Max works fine with my Mac)
Personally not experienced this. However, continuity camera seems to have gotten more unstable over the past months for me.
It's bad because Apple now has to (OFFICIALLY) support a wider range of devices.
And then there is less incentive for Apple to further improve this interface because any improvements will benefit non-Apple devices (i.e. do the foundational work but everyone else gets the positive exposure)
You mean it will benefit Apple’s customers, who prefer headphones not made by Apple? If only the incentive for Apple to improve their interface was that its paying customers will have a better interface.
I really don't understand people who defend Apple on this. The only reason I can imagine is that they're shareholders who don't use any Apple products, or shareholders who use exclusively Apple products and can't understand what sort of poor scrub might want an accessory not made by them.
It's the second one, but without being shareholders.
I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence.
There are many reasons to criticize Apple, but wanting to not only control the exceptional ecosystem where everything just works as seamlessly as possible, but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me.
What I don’t think dawns on people is that this is an example of an intersection between what some call capitalism and communism mindsets, or it may be far more accurately described as the ants and the grasshoppers, the freeloader problem.
People like the iPhone for its having worked extremely hard to make its devices work really well, but those same people don’t understand how and why that behavior they like actually came about, so they start trying to “improve” things they don’t have the foggiest understanding about.
It’s a typical narcissistic type behavior and mindset of self-importance, that now that the hard work has been accomplished they’re here to take over and improve things they don’t understand and weren’t involved in creating.
It seems to be a mindset that totally infected and is spreading all throughout the whole West for whatever reason. People simply have no idea how what they inherited was created, let alone even know how to keep it going, not to mention fix anything.
Just alone the fact that it’s EU bureaucrats imposing these things makes it extremely unlikely that it is a good idea, considering not a single consequential tech company has been produced as a function of the EU. It is that obnoxious EU technocratic know-it-all hubris that keeps them even understanding just how little they actually know, which is so dangerous and reeks of malicious jealousy.
At least in the USA, the idiots in Congress are accountable to a constituency that elected them, and they tend to be able to discern that they simply don’t know enough to interfere with how Apple (for example) is doing what it does to produce the world’s best devices and services.
Not the EU and its blob of unelected bureaucratic despots and unelected Commission of dictators, it is confident it knows more than Apple about how to do what all of Europe cannot seem to actually accomplish. Europe has not even been able to emulate what the Asians have done by forking Android, but here they are, wagging their fingers telling people how it is. Why do Europeans not get tired of that pathetic attitude?
Frankly, I wish Apple had the non-binary balls to simply just cut off all iPhones in Europe rather than bend to EU despot dictates.
At least I can hold onto the gleeful spite that Apple may just use this as an opportunity to push people into buying more Apple products by demonstrating that, e.g., “your use of non-Apple headphones has caused your phone battery to drain 10% faster and damaged the battery by 5%”. It’s perfect advertisement… brought to you by the idiots in the EU bureaucracy playing tic-tac-toe strategy against grand masters.
Your whole post is an ignorant, ugly and hate filled rant of little value, but I will pick out this one trope:
> Not the EU and its blob of unelected bureaucratic despots and unelected Commission of dictators
EU haters have two complaints, that it is unelected and that it takes away sovereignty, yet it consists of the members of national governments that not only elect the various officers of the EU (including the Commission) but also vote on all major decisions of the EU, as well as the directly elected EU parliament. So in fact the EU preserves both sovereignty and the votes of EU citizens, both member governments and citizen representatives must approve all EU actions.
It's a little complicated sure, apparently too complicated for some to understand.
> I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence.
So do I. And my >20 years in the business gives me the experience and knowledge to see through Apple’s FUD.
> […] but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me.
It is my device. I paid for it. If Apple thinks they deserve more money for what they did they are free to ask me, the customer, for more money.
> […] unelected bureaucratic despots
Aha, the dog whistle of the AfD brand of conspiratorial bullshit ”unelected” nonsense! Career bureaucracy is supposed to be certified and educated, not elected, because that is the only way they can properly implement the laws of the electorate. Bureaucracy still answers to elected officials, but they are supposed to act without political interference and provide specialist knowledge. For the same reason you do not vote on every captain and colonel in the military hierarchy, or every tax collector/auditor in your IRS equivalent, you do not vote on every bureaucrat in the Commission tasked to execute and implement law.
> Frankly, I wish Apple had the non-binary balls to simply just cut off all iPhones in Europe rather than bend to EU despot dictates
Perhaps you should come back when you’re less emotional. Suggesting incredibly poor value for shareholder decision while also being hateful (non-binary balls, indeed) is showing the whole ass. Never go whole ass.
You're getting downvoted but it's absolutely true that people simply don't want to (or are incapable) of considering second and third order effects that arise from applying interventions on systems that they do not understand.
non-apple headphones work just fine with Apple products. In fact, Apple's bluetooth stack seem to work best among all the portable devices I come across (no random droppings, connects on first try etc.)
I was unaware that my headphone experience as impaired in some way.
I exclusively use non Apple headphones and I have no issues. I had AirPods for a while and I don’t remember them being better.
They have nifty apple-only features, like you can hold them close to the iPhone and they'll pop up and pair with a neat UI.
It's mostly gimicky, but it does give the user the impression that the apple Air pods are higher quality because they have all these things thought out. In actuality, Apple just made it so they're the only ones who can do that.
My iPhone has plenty of trouble connecting to various devices at times. God forbid it has to manage connecting to my car and my headphones at once. It works OK most of the time, but at least once a week it proves to be a problem.
Apple used to brag that “it just works”. That included peripherals it did not control. Nowadays, it can’t even have its own devices work correctly.
Apple has stopped improving long ago, and it’s not regulation that’s at fault.
I was unconvinced till I switched my devices, one by one, to Apple products a few years ago. They really do just work, especially with specification abiding devices.
Everything else feels flakey.
Based on the latest iOS / MacOS update they don’t want to improve their interfaces anyway.
Currently, on the AirPods side and not iOS side like the article covers, Apple breaks Bluetooth feature parity with other devices by not sticking to the Bluetooth spec with AirPods themselves.
For example, you need to root and patch your Bluetooth stack on your phone if you want to use all of your AirPods features on Android, and not because Android is doing something wrong, it's because the Android Bluetooth stack actually sticks to the spec and AirPods don't.
And even when you do that, you can't do native AAC streaming like you can with iOS/macOS. Even if you're listening to AAC encoded audio, it'll be transcoded again as 256kbps AAC over Bluetooth.
Even no name earbuds on Amazon manage to not break Bluetooth and can offer cross platform high quality audio over Bluetooth.
On the other hand, there’s been a bug open to make a simple harmless change to fix this in Android for 9 months, with no response from Google other than asking for reproduction steps as far as I can tell.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238
Some comments on the bug accuse Google of intentionally not fixing it to make people buy Pixel Buds instead of AirPods.
I wouldn’t say that myself, but then again I also wouldn’t say that Apple intentionally violated the spec just to make AirPods not work on Android.
They do this on purpose if you didn't get it. Google will never "fix" this issue because they follow the spec. They shouldn't have to add an exception for AirPods.
> Google will never "fix" this issue because they follow the spec. They shouldn't have to add an exception for AirPods.
This seems to go against how OS development (and perhaps consumer software in general, just think about browsers!) works in reality, it's just piles of exceptions on top of exceptions for weird hardware.
Even no name earbuds on Amazon manage to not break Bluetooth and can offer cross platform high quality audio over Bluetooth
That's because they're all based on a small set of BT SoCs from companies who are not exclusively dependent on the Apple ecosystem and need to interoperate with everything BT-compliant.
Can headphones that stick to the spec actually play nicely with multiple devices? - switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?
Yes, this is called Bluetooth multipoint and has been common on non-Apple devices (for example Bose) for a few years now. Requires no logins and is vendor-agnostic.
I can stop music on my phone and immediately listen to music from my laptop. I have non-apple headphones, a non-apple laptop and an iPhone. There is no apple magic dust that makes this happen.
Can you do that with 7 devices? Can you pair your device with your phone and it automatically pairs with all of your devices?
> switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?
They do that? Mine can't even switch quickly between my corporate and my own iphone.
Are they on the same iCloud account? I believe that's the magic needed.
Of course not, that's the whole point of having a separate corp phone ;)
But why would switching headphone connections need the cloud... ah... nevermind...
Waiting to read the news that this unblocks all functionalities in the re-pebble so I could finally purchase one that fully works with iPhones. Way to go EU!
Apple should dump their Product Managers and hire the EU bureaucrats directly then we will finally see improvements and innovations again.
Let’s call them bureaucrats, but let’s not forget that their baseline is to be public servants, while that of product managers is to increase profits :-) . I think the system is working as intended though, because increasing profits can be a great driver for innovation and service to the consumer, until it’s not and the “immune system” (the bureaucracy) must be called on to fight the uncontrolled pathological growth…
Brussels primary interest is the process, not the people.
If you don't think there isn't any "uncontrolled pathological growth" anywhere in the EU, then you should look at ALL OF THE LEGALLY SANCTIONED GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES HERE.
End of story.
> ALL OF THE LEGALLY SANCTIONED GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES HERE.
This is the kinda claim that really needs citations, and ideally some commentary on how the examples demonstrate the point you’re trying to make. Otherwise it’s impossible to reply to, and just comes across a little shrill and conspiratorial. Which I don’t think is your goal.
It's a tragedy, though no surprise, that this is required
I guess "the regulations will continue until product management improves".
I hope EU subdues Apple fully, and one day I can run Linux on my iPad. At least virtualised.
So this tap to pair won’t work in the US? The side loading stuff I can understand to restrict to the EU, but this just seems like a nice feature for everyone
Apple is not really interested in giving you nice features that makes it easier for you to escape their ecosystem and have Apple make less money.
They even restrict "letting you choose the default maps app" to jurisdictions that legally require it (EU and Japan), there is literally no justification for that other than "we want to increase KPIs for our shitty Apple Maps app by making people accidentally open it", it's an extremely basic toggle that pretty much any user of Google Maps would prefer.
> The side loading stuff I can understand to restrict to the EU
Just curious: why do you understand they restrict it to EU?
It's pretty clear isn't it?
They do so with third-party app stores.
And if they wanted to have airpods-like pairing to third-parties in US, they would already have.
The only reason they might bring this to US is customers will be royally pissed.
> It's pretty clear isn't it?
If it were, they wouldn’t be asking. And you haven’t answered it either. Your parent comment is asking why the grandparent commenter thinks it makes sense to restrict third-party stores to the EU instead of having them everywhere.
I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users.
Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good for users. Companies either become dominant, or universally screw over their users. Users either have no choice, do not understand the choices, or simply don't care.
I am glad the EU tries to do something. They aren't always right, but they should be trying. As a reminder, one of the biggest success stories of EU regulation: cheap cellular roaming within the EU. It used to be horribly expensive (like it is in the US), but the EU (specifically, Margrethe Vestager) regulated this and miracle of miracles, we can now move across the EU and not worry about horrendous cell phone bills.
Gruber’s take on the USB-C stuff has been hilarious.
All through that fiasco, where Apple was going through all sorts of twists and turns to avoid switching to USB-C, which was objectively better even if you’re an Apple partisan (given that I could carry a single charging cable for my Mac and Samsung phone, but not for my Mac and iPhone), he was going on and on about how the EU was killing creativity by forcing Apple to do something they didn’t want to.
And then Apple relented, their USB-C iPhone saw some of the fastest growth over a previous model despite having minimal other upgrades, indicating significant pent up demand for a USB-C phone.
And I’m guessing at this point even Gruber can’t imagine living life with a Lightning charger, so now the tune is that Apple was planning on switching to USB-C and they were playing a game to make it like like they were forced to switch by the EU so as not to alienate their current Lightning charger fans.
It’s a patently ridiculous idea but it’s necessary given how badly wrong he was on this issue because of how badly he continues to misunderstand how the EU works (which isn’t anything like how the US govt works).
Anecdotally, I’ve found Lightning to be a nice fit when plugged in (it’s got a nice “click”) and USB-C a bit flimsy and loose in comparison. YMMV.
> All through that fiasco, where Apple was going through all sorts of twists and turns to avoid switching to USB-C
Is there any evidence that "Apple was going through all sorts of twists and turns to avoid switching to USB-C"?
Apple worked to create the USB-C standard, was among the first to widely deploy it.
Apple fighting against a precedent where the EU would force them to switch everything to USB-C is strictly different from Apple going through all sorts of twists and turns to avoid switching to USB-C.
>Apple worked to create the USB-C standard, was among the first to widely deploy it.
And that is exactly Gruber's take. Apple created USB-C standard and gave it to the USB committee for free.
And it is not even half true. But it spread across the internet as if it was verified.
The other one being Apple AirPod sold at cost, and suggest Apple invented big.SMALL CPU core.
I haven’t heard anyone make any of those claims in the way you’ve made them.
Conversely, the inference you leave readers with from your description of Apple’s contribution to USB-C and CPU design is just as untrue.
according to this Apple is listed as one of the contributors:
https://www.those.ch/designtechnik/wp-content/uploads/2014/0...
Of course you could actually try to link to some context on this.
Apple certainly didn't create USB-C, but was one of the biggest contributors.
They also capped credit card fees at 0.3% in 2015. It also included a prohibition on discrimination against any merchant based on eg size or category of goods sold. And as far as I can see neither Mastercard nor Visa had problems staying in business.
Yes! I forgot about this. The EU Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) effectively eliminated the high fixed minimum fees that previously made small-value card transactions unprofitable for merchants.
The net effect of this is that in Poland, for example, you can carry your phone and no wallet, because you can pay literally for everything using your phone. And I do mean everything, I've recently been to a club in Warsaw and the cloakroom had a terminal mounted on the wall, people just tapped their phones.
So you cannot compare it apples to oranges. There is much more regulation in EU.
In EU there is also more consumer protection by default, so charge backs can be rejected by merchants but a consumer can easily take a merchant to court. So capping card fees is also more reasonable.
Also, when a merchant goes bankrupt and customers perform charge-backs it would involve the entire payment chain. First merchant reserves, then acquiring bank, then MasterCard/Visa, then issuing bank (customer), and lastly the customer. With lower card fees, this has impact on the merchant reserves and their risk profile. Furthermore, acquirers can add additional fees on top if needed.
You can also get lower card fees in US if you have a low risk business model.
> You can also get lower card fees in US if you have a low risk business model.
It is only the maximum fee that is capped (along with various provisions for eg transparency). You can also get lower fees in EU, just twenty minutes ago I saw an ad for just such a zero-fee card.
His business is too tied to being in Apple's good graces anyway to take him that seriously these days. In the past he's been given access well above a lot of bigger outlets and way above what a blog that size should have especially when most of his social media output is now on mastodon to an audience the fraction of his X size.
All though I would say EU regulation has far more misses than hits, this and forcing Apple to USB-C were great but millions of man hours a year are burned navigating cookie banners on every website and chat control being forced through soon.
So we have two wins on iOS device convenience, not a great trade off for the other overreach.
You realize he just famously got in Apple’s “bad graces” this year with his “Something is rotten in Cupertino” post and for the first time in a decade they didn’t make an Apple executive available to be on his post WWDC live show?
Let’s not forget also that the EU first wanted to standardize on micro USB.
> were great but millions of man hours a year are burned navigating cookie banners on every website
Cookie banner are not, in fact, an obligation under GDPR. All you need to do to be GDPR compliant is “not collect and sell data to partners” and call it a day. Cookie banners are a loophole that the EC conceded to an ad industry that is addicted to tracking everyone all the time.
It's a totally reasonable position that both regulation and companies exploiting users are wrong. And it's also entirely a moral assertion that markets should resolve to outcomes judged by members of some political apparatus. Likewise, the idea that a third party should interfere with economic relations between two consenting parties is also a moral judgement, not an absolute fact.
Most arguments in favour of regulation cherry pick what they feel are success stories and ignore everything else. Interfering with highly complex and dynamical self-regulating systems has a cost. There are many examples of regulation leading to negative outcomes, and it's also telling that large corporations push for regulation because it's one of the most effective obstacles for competition in a market.
Markets depend on regulations.
Free market absolutists don’t know what they are talking about.
The actual originators of market capitalism, most famously Adam Smith, but also proponents like Milton Friedman, had no such confusion.
In reality, today’s free market absolutists don’t get their ideas from economists (even free market economists). Instead, they get their ideas from terrible mid 20th century novelists (I’ll let you figure out who I’m talking about), who didn’t know much about how anything worked, never mind economics.
What is the point of responding to someone if you're going to completely ignore everything they say? Serious question, I'm curious what compels you to do this. Especially in such an arrogant and condescending way.
What you said is a bigger fantasy than the complete history of fundamentalist Marxism. There are precisely zero examples of a Laissez-faire economy succeeding in the real world. It is a wholecloth fiction.
If you'd like to reconsider your stance from a realpolitik perspective, it might clarify the parent's response.
Can you be specific about what I said being a complete fantasy? I feel like you're trying to extrapolate some view of economics onto me when I was making the point that there are reasonable arguments that can be made against government intervention. Or is that it, you don't even think a reasonable argument can be made? If so I would call that ideological, not reasonable.
Markets depend on regulations. You can make any case you want, but you must acknowledge this root fact if you are discussing real-world capitalist policy. Otherwise you are advocating to change a system that does not exist in real life, or reflect any modern economy anywhere on the planet.
Your claim that the parent ignored everything you said is bad-faith and objectively wrong. They are critiquing your attack on regulation and pointing out that reality works in the opposite way. Case in point, you have no bombshell argument against regulating Apple in this instance. You cited no real-world examples and gestured at generic and irrelevant anti-regulation boogeymen. Then you used ad-hominem to attack them instead of refuting the point they made.
The notion that I'm the one arguing in bad faith is laughable. Nobody has actually addressed any of the points I brought up, instead defaulting to assertions that regulations are necessary and thus I'm "objectively wrong". This is not how you foster good discussions - you need to be willing to listen and address the opposing viewpoints that are brought up. If I wanted to do the same thing you are doing, I would simply assert that "Markets don't require regulations" and I've made an argument of equal strength, but of course a meaningless one.
If you're actually interested in having a discussion it would be worthwhile to explain your reasoning behind why you think markets depend on regulation. I can think of a few good arguments for that position, because I'm capable of considering multiple perspectives and I'm actually interested in having a debate. You seem more interested in shutting down opposing viewpoints and bullying the other participants into submission.
Right, but regulations are necessary. And ideological opposition to regulation, as a concept, in inherently wrong and always will be.
Some regulations are good, some are bad. In order to have a free market, you MUST have some regulations. It's not optional.
The reason is simple and intuitive - if you don't regulate the free market, it will just make itself un-free, which is what we're seeing with Apple. You need to actively push back against that.
The reason is all free market players, no exceptions, have the utmost fundamental incentive to make the market non-free. Everyone, all the time, is devising new and innovative ways to make the market they control non-free. Because this is how you maximize revenue.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
Yeah, all too often discussion devolves into a religious war between free markets and regulation. Like they're somehow opposing forces. Markets are super cool and useful tools. Some regulation is good, some is bad, which exactly is which depends on your values and what you want to optimize for. Framing markets like they automatically do good, or ideas like "we need more regulation" or "we need fewer regulations" are all thought-terminating.
So far the DMA seems like a partial-win for technology users. I wish it enshrined the right to run software on your own computer in less ambiguous language, because as-is there are carve-outs that may let Apple get away with their core technology fee and mandatory app signing.
Yesterday, I was trying to get a voice memo out of my Apple watch - on which the recording was made. I switched from Apple last year. My cousin had an iPhone. Apple would not let me transfer the voice memo out of their eco-system. It's not on my iCloud and the watch can no longer be paired with any other iOS device (even temorarily with authentication to transfer a file)...unless the iPhone is registered to me. This is malicious compliance in the name of security.
And mind you, I own 3 Apple devices - 2 Macs and 1 iPad and the watch can't connect to any of those. I must be forced to buy a $1000 device just because I made the mistake of recording something on their watch. We need more regulation because of things like this and I would absolutely hate to live in a society where this is the norm.
If you are not using iCloud, you could try activating it (you get 5 gigs for free IIRC) and switching off everything besides the Voice Memos app. Then you should see the recording on your Mac, and should be able to export it from there. Definitely a shitty workaround, but you might be able to make it work?
also usbc in iphones! finally we can just carry one cable
I'm very glad we eventually got standardized chargers. It's too bad the standard happened to be the madness that USB-C is though.
Oh exactly, it's great to have a single cable / charger for many different items in the household. The biggest downside I see with USB-C in this case is that the cables and chargers get quite expensive if you want to be able to just grab one and charge stuff, without having to worry about wattage etc.
All in all a big improvement, with some future improvements left to make. Fingers crossed for a more sane USB-D in twenty years.
Even the most maligned lids attached to bottles looks stupid for 5 minutes but have the nice side effect of not having to hold the lid while you drink, which makes things easier most of the time you're holding something else
Nah I can't get behind that one. I love Europe and I want to live there, but I would 100% take the North American free bottle caps any day.
I don't think it's as black and white as you suggest.
He just wrote about Japan's implementation of a similar set of laws rather favourably - the theme is that Japan's implementation looks very much like a genuine attempt at protecting users and benefitting end users and developers.
While I don't agree with what a lot of what Gruber has to say. A point I do agree with is that the DMA is being sold (by Margrethe Vestager, Thierry Breton and Ursula von der Leyer) as a set of consumer protections, when it's plainly not that, and in some clear ways does the opposite.
There's also persistent transparency questions like why the EU has excessive meetings with Spotify, or why there is not a "music" gatekeeper in the DMA, or the requirement to easily move music libraries between music services - things that would actually help consumers and prevent genuine lock in.
(Note this isn't to excuse the behaviour of big tech.)
I just read the post about Japan.
The only example he gave where the MSCA is better than the DMA is:
> E.g. apps distributed outside the App Store in Japan still require age ratings. There’s no such requirement in the EU.
Most of his description of what Japan does better is simply “mutual respect”. Which reinforces the idea that this isn’t about the actual practical differences but about ego. Apple hates how the EU forces them to make change.
And Apple has done this before. After the EU forced them to make a change, which emboldened other nations to push similar changes, Apple points to those other nations’s obviously more streamlined law making process (given that the EU has already gone through the hard work of drafting the law, working with a non-cooperative Apple, and then actually seeing it implemented and the practical issues that arise), to justify their hostility to the EU’s trend setting efforts, without which those other nations would almost certainly have not proceeded.
I bet if Japan’s MSCA had come before the DMA, Apple’s tone towards both those governments would have been reversed.
He has been anti EU / UK or EUR for quite some time even during Jony Ive era. Regardless of regulations.
>I just read the post about Japan.
Great, now let's stack what you've written in both of your comments directly against what Gruber has written, and not what an imaginary strawman wrote.
You wrote:
1. I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad.
2. The EU has already gone through the hard work of drafting the law, working with a non-cooperative Apple, and then actually seeing it implemented and the practical issues that arise.
3. Most of his description of what Japan does better is simply “mutual respect”.
Addressing point 1 (again):
I wrote words to the effect of (they're just above): Gruber's writing is not as black and white as you assert and then I made reference to the Japan regulation article as an example where Gruber again makes nuanced arguments towards regulated changes.
That article does not make a blanket statement that regulation is bad, and Gruber points to a long-standing idea that he has which neither the EU nor Japan have regulated, which he believes should be. He's also stated (repeatedly) that he's in favour of link-outs and other commonly requested changes to the app store terms, and believe's Apple are too slow to change on these.
So does Gruber believe all regulation is bad as you have asserted: no. His views are demonstrably in favour of well-minded regulation.
Addressing point 2: The belief that the EU bears the brunt of regulation teething, and that's why it goes well in other regions.
Maybe you skipped the part where Gruber points to a 2021 regulation requirement from Japan, which Apple in fact did not provide resistance to, but worked with the regulatory authority to achieve their goal - then Schiller himself (the overseer of the App store at the time) came out and spoke in public with supportive language. That is an example Gruber provided, however there are plenty more examples of the app store changing policies long before the EU took notice. The EU gets all the attention here because they seem to be uniquely incapable of foreseeing unintended consequences.
So is the EU's leading the source of friction. No and they're not even first in many respects.
Addressing point 3: Gruber makes only immaterial "mutual respect" comparisons between DMA/MSCA.
I'm guessing you skimmed this bit too - Gruber talks at length to MSCA and DMA's approach to regulation, stating that MSCA's changes prioritise privacy and security in contrast to the DMA, and practical aspects such as user safety (that's a wee bit more than "mutual respect"). Secondly that users are not presented with onerous choice screens (see end note 1) which is making reference to the EU's requirement that browser selection screens must be repeatedly shown when the user's default browser is Safari (but not if it's any other browser), Japan doesn't take this approach to a browser selection screen.
So is it true that Gruber makes immaterial comparisons between the two: again no.
Got a MacBook for work recently, paired it to my AirPods I had for months, and it was funny noticing you could enable FindMy for them from the settings but they wouldn't show up in my devices on the map. Indeed, for this you need to pair with an iPhone or iPad. However it did enable the beacon on the airpods as the next day AirGuard notified a device was following me. And since, I can't disable it, the switch in the settings doesn't disable the beacon AirGuard still detects them. Even within their ecosystem they'll punish you for not being fully "part of the familly".
I wonder, could this means we get better support for things like sending messages from Garmin smartwatches?
Previously, this was available on Android but not iOS as Apple didn’t expose the APIs for watches other than their own.
Depending on how you look at it, there may be two distinct parts to this:
a) API to not just read notifications but also perform the notification quick actions (if any), e.g snooze for a calendar event, mark complete for a reminder, and of course reply for a text (SMS or otherwise). This seems entirely reasonable and ludicrous that it doesn't exist.
b) API to access SMS / Messages. That one appears to be heavily guarded because security / E2E (for iMessage).
I mention b) because a lot of times people invoke the problem a being b) (and possibly a problem in its own right, forcing one to use Messages for SMS) but really for watches a) is sufficient and probably much more relevant.
There's also a.1) API access to media (images) in notifications.
In any case, DMA could definitely help crack both.
I would settle for my Garmin not disconnecting every few days at this point
I mean I’d settle for the status quo and Garmin itself not deleting big parts of my watch faces.
The last update from Garmin did this to my Epix. Funnily enough the complications can still be activated if you touch the screen, they’re just invisible.
FTA: “The changes to proximity pairing and notifications are only available for device makers […] in the European Union.”
Will that mean we’ll see some last step assembly move into the EU, or does it only require legal presence?
Yeah this would be weird if it's only for EU based companies. I think apple strategy is overall 'divide and conquer' making all different stuff working different in EU, Japan, UK, US. To this already many variables also if the user has account in EU and also if is living in EU or for how long. Their whole compliance is not robust and reliable making this in fact dead on arrival. Any maker relying on this will have more complains from customers. Customers will think that all non-apple solution are buggy and reliable and will stick with apple stuff.
> I think apple strategy is overall 'divide and conquer'
I think Tim Cook’s strategy is rather “hoard and extract as much money as legally possible, no matter what it does to the experience”. Selling tech products is no different to him than selling car parts of frozen meat. What matters to him is the pile of money at the end.
Where there's a will--or a law--there's a way. Hallelujah!
Would this include the UK I wonder?
It seems the UK will have to undertake their own procedure. Unless they rejoin before that (one can hope).
Just realised I’m not in the EU (from UK). There was me thinking about digging my old Garmin out!
You guys are always welcome to rejoin once you figure your drama out.
We miss you, British Friends <3
Considering how aggressive they’ve been about internet legislation lately, mandating age checks and asking companies to give them keys to encrypted data, I think I’d rather them not rejoin just yet, we don’t need another country trying to force Chat Control and making it worse.
Only let us back if we join schengen.
Honestly, ideally you'd rejoin without any of the weird opt-outs you had.
But I wouldn't let that be the sticking point, y'all are too important to us to get hung up on it.
Likely not. FTA: “The changes to proximity pairing and notifications are only available for device makers and iPhone and iPad users in the European Union.”
Wow, it's almost as if regulations were necessary to curtail the worst excesses of capitalism and steer it towards user interest instead of maximal exploitation...
EU gave up non working AI in exchange for something useful.
https://mistral.ai