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by mbirth 261 days ago
> creating Private APIs for connected device

In the same way, the EU could ask manufacturers of wireless headphones to open up and homologise their proprietary “APIs” with which they communicate with the other earpiece so you can mix&match single earpieces from different manufacturers.
2 comments
tpush 261 days ago
Yeah, they could.
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tpm 261 days ago
The point of this regulation (DMA) is to enable more competition in important market segments. If this exact thing becames somehow very important, sure, it's possible, otherwise it's a bit contrived. What's the point?
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kenferry 260 days ago
Their point is the reverse.

Forcing standardization and interop is obviously good for interop, but it's bad for companies trying to innovate, because it ties their hands. The moment apple ships a v1 they have to ship an API, and then they have to support that API and can't change it. When it's private they can figure it out.

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timschmidt 260 days ago
Apple already spends years in R&D before releasing anything. Many of their R&D devices never see market. Requiring them to share an API they've actually shipped to paying customers is not a significant additional hurdle. We know how to version APIs now. They can still make improvements to public APIs without hurting anyone.
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tpm 260 days ago
> but it's bad for companies trying to innovate

Which is why DMA only applies to huge, dominant companies (the complete list: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft) and there too it does not apply to all technologies, only for those where standardization is important to enable competition. It's much more important to have at least some competition than letting dominant companies monopolise entire markets through 'innovation' with private APIs.

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