[smoldesu]

Well, the EU is starting to think the iPhone ecosystem is about anti competitive behavior and poor customer experience. The intentions of a multinational corporation are completely irrelevant when talking about the real-world impact on thousands of developers.

The deal is the same as it ever was: Apple can continue selling their extremely safe applications with their extremely secure payment system and state-of-the-art curation team; the only condition is that other shops get to play along too. There's zero downside to them going this route, I think it would allow them to further secure the iPhone by paring back the entitlements allowed for their store. Nobody would criticize them for this, but Apple's greed prevents them from conceding.

Just think about how you'd feel if your Mac could only use the App Store to install software. Personally, I wouldn't even be able to do anything on it if that were the case.

[Bud]

Screw the impact on developers. As a user, I'm more concerned about the impact on users.

The EU is dead wrong. EU commissioners have absolutely zero clue about what makes for good "customer experience". There's one party that has proven, for 15 years now, to have the most clue about that. It's Apple.

[politician]

That's a fine perspective to have, but many people feel that a government of elected representatives is a better place for determining and adjusting impacts on people.

[trebbble]

I find myself in the utterly bizarre position (to me, anyway) of defending a megacorp against government interference because government has failed to reign in the bad behavior of the entire rest of the software market. Granted the EU's headed the right direction, but they've still not gone far enough, and the US is way behind. I hope EU citizens get what they want, but am also hoping we don't see those effects bleed over into the US market—yet, with the legal protections we have in place right now.

My preference would be that spying and hoarding data about users simply be outlawed (plus a bunch of other things, some of which Apple does, unfortunately, allow) and those laws be well-enforced—and also the walled gardens opened up, by law if necessary, but I'd much rather not see the latter without the former happening first, since the current state of things in-fact lets me choose to have some protection against that bad behavior, without significant time investment on my part. If that private regulatory service breaks down for any reason, I'll simply be worse off, as things stand.

[Apocryphon]

The "if iOS is opened up, Meta will put Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp on their own app store and steal user data" doomsday scenario has always seemed a little half-baked to me. Regulators on both sides of the pond are scrutinizing tech companies for all sorts of issues now. I doubt the EU will just be asleep at the wheel if Meta sets up a massive data collection op on European citizens. User data and privacy is just as important to them. Perhaps governments can walk and chew gum at the same time.

[JimDabell]

> The "if iOS is opened up, Meta will put Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp on their own app store and steal user data" doomsday scenario has always seemed a little half-baked to me.

Meta was literally already caught doing this by abusing enterprise certificates to bypass the App Store to spy on people, including children, until Apple stopped them.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/31/apple-fac...

[Apocryphon]

Yes, and presumably the authorities would not go easy on them next time, with the greater political pressure to rein them in. And if Meta was doing that on their own third party store where all attention can be focused on them, misbehavior would be even more visible because they would not be hiding it behind someone else’s platform.

[8note]

So what you're saying is that the app store is just as good as the government in this case? If meta will do this anyways, I'd rather have the openness and democratic oversight

[Bud]

A "government of elected representatives" (which is not what ruled in this case, of course, that's not what the EU body in question is) actually is the worst possible way to determine what a good customer experience.

Which is why God invented corporations for this purpose. I'm all for democracy, and there's a place for that. This isn't it.