[tinus_hn]

> Europe actually has some teeth. Playing dumb when Europe tells you "try me" is a sure way to be banned out of the common market.

It all remains to be seen, some EU Joe random hotshot issuing warnings is no more than that, warnings. If any action is to come from the EU side, it’ll be after years and years of legal wrangling and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Apples lawyers end up outsmarting some pompous EU councilman.

[ohgodplsno]

Ah, yes, Thierry Breton, current European Commissioner for Internal Market who pushed for the Digital Markets Acts (that has Apple currently yielding and tucking its tail between its legs with 0 years of legal wrangling, allowing external app stores but just for Europe because it clearly doesn't care about its US customers) is a Pompous Councilman Joe Random Hotshot that gets outsmarted by Apple's US lawyers.

Sure, you go on and keep believing that :)

[tinus_hn]

Only time will tell. As of yet, all we have is warnings.

[ghaff]

At the end of the day, if Apple needs to have a slightly modified design to accommodate EU regulations, that's a drop in the bucket. And if it's slightly inferior in some way, that's between EU citizens and their governments.

[ohgodplsno]

Apple has a single production line. If they drop Lightning for the EU, they drop Lightning for the whole world. Their entire margin strategy is based on having as few SKUs as possible. In the same way that GDPR made every single major US tech player comply and offer more or less the same tools for the rest of the world.

[ghaff]

Of course Apple has more SKUs than they need to have. Different product generations, sizes, storage options, colors, etc. Adding a different connector on some subset of models for some number of countries is perfectly doable.

It's probably moot because Apple seems to be moving to USB-C over all their product lines anyway. But if the EU were to mandate something that Apple felt was a materially inferior choice, I'd fully expect them to comply where they had to and implement a different option everywhere else.

GDPR is simply a case of, if a company doesn't have a compelling reason for not following GDPR where possible, it's just easier to follow mostly uniform rules worldwide.

[tinus_hn]

GDPR is actually an excellent example, all tough talk with strict rules, yet basically nobody follows the rules and nothing happens. The government itself runs websites that say ‘you can’t visit this site unless you agree to our use of cookies!’