This argument doesn't hold up to any scrutiny if you try to apply it to any other kind of portable software.
Spotify is a music player that uses the Electron framework and it doesn't run on iOS.
Outlook is a email client that uses the WinUI engine and it doesn't run on iOS.
Netflix is an applet that runs on the Microsoft Silverlight engine, and that doesn't run on iOS.
There is something that feels wrong about Apple's restrictions for browsers but different platform necessitating different, often fundamentally different, implementations isn't quite it.
Spotify's distinguishing feature is not "using Electron". Same for all of the other apps you mentioned.
Chrome's distinguishing feature is "not being Safari or Firefox". It has this distinguishing feature on all other platforms like Linux, Mac, Android and Windows. Only on one platform is this feature missing, and that is why it is emphasized so much.
Well even on iOS Chrome is a different app from Safari and Firefox. Mozilla has two different browsers — even on iOS where all browsers are "the same" Mozilla sees enough differences to have two separate ones.
You're just restating the premise. I think Outlook could make a case for just being a wrapper for Apple Mail. Valve could make the case that Steam's distinguishing feature is lacking on iOS. Again, there is some signal here but I've never heard anyone be able to really explain it.
Outlook could make a great case that Apple’s own email client has access to all kinds of great iOS APIs that are only available to Apple and not to third party email clients. Apple mail has deep OS integration that is impossible for third party email clients. Apple Mail can fetch in the background at will while Outlook has to build that on top of mediocre APIs.
the engine it’s running is the safari one, chrome on iOS is just an alternative interface with different syncing semantics.
that said, this thread of reasoning has started wrong, there is no market for web browsers on iOS just like there’s no market for phone diallers on your in-car stereo system.. What you get is what you get, and that’s always been the case and Apple products are the only devices that can run Safari…
if you keep thinking of apple devices as computers instead of like consoles or appliances, then you are going to get upset.
There is a market for web browsers as soon as Google is able to ship a “real” Chrome for iOS and half they start breaking things gently on the web for other browsers. Just like they did over the timespan of a decade.
Once Chrome can ship on iOS you will see everyone’s market share crumble and Chrome becoming the only browser.
That is anti competitive and not even addressed in any kind of way by the DMA.
On the contrary, it is the end game for the OWA, which is largely a front for “let’s make sure Chromium will dominate the web so that Google can push project Fugu down everyone’s throats.”
I find this difficult to reconcile with the case against Microsoft, which I understood to be about pushing IE on Windows.
Are you saying that the case against Microsoft wasn't based on anticompetitive attempts to dominate the market for web browsers, that the law has changed since then, or that Windows is somehow different from iOS legally?
Another distinction is that the EU has figured out something in between.
That the US has been waging an economic wars and used unconventional warfare techniques, corporate espionage, corruption, and weaponized the US dollar.
That US businesses have been lobbying and interfering with politics in the EU to provide themselves with competitive edges.
Lobbying is itself illegal in many EU nations hence done undercover, thus is plain bribery and corruption of government officials
EU has started retaliating, that's all. At least in using the justice system the way the US has instrumented its own to serve US businesses, helping them win certain markets, and fine competing foreign to the US businesses, fortunes, and ruining them whenever possible.
Still, not letting side loads, imposing to be an intermediary and payment gateway between all publishers and their audience, taking an outrageous commission rate, plus a fixed developer licensing fee, plus forcing all developers to build the published binaries exclusively on Apple made hardware, plus disallowing third parties to repair, plus circumventing the right to repair bill, altogether is without doubt abusing a position of dominance and deploying anti competition tactics.
Saying these are measures to keep users safe is a fallacy and an insult to educated consumers, all it says really is a reveal of how Apple considers its consumers at large.
Chrome is a web browser using the Blink engine, and it doesn't run on iOS devices.