Telegram, the messaging app, has become the latest company to file a formal antitrust complaint to the EU over Apple’s App Store.
In a complaint to EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, Telegram, which has more than 400 million users, said Apple must “allow users to have the opportunity of downloading software outside of the App Store.”
Allowing applications from outside the App Store is the bare minimum of what our governments must mandate from Apple (and other platform makers with similar restrictions). I will go several steps further: all software and firmware on devices shipping to consumers must be open source. No exceptions.
To function in a modern western society, computers – smartphone, desktop, laptop – are required. They have become a hugely important pillar of our society, and yet, our devices are controlled not by society or our governments, but by large corporations who don’t have to answer to anyone.
This is unacceptable. Access to vital parts of our society are getting more and more restricted to computers, and this means we should have the right to control them, so we can prevent people being locked out because of opaque App Store rules or foreign government interference. If all these devices are open – open source, down to the firmware – we will never be locked out by anyone.
Imagine having to file your taxes, but for some reason Apple decided to not approve the latest update to the government app you’re supposed to use and remove it from the App Store. Is that the future we should want?
I never investigated this area in depth, but if for example Spotify has to pay 30% commission on all sales to Apple and on top of that Apple is pushing for a high market share with its own service, Apple Music. This indeed does read as the textbook example of an abuse of monopoly power.
I am not saying that I don´t agree but this won´t go anywhere. If thet agree with this they would have to do the same with game consoles.
That’s an interesting point. In that case the (if?) Atari VCS would be the only one out there that allows different store fronts / streaming services to be ran on it.
Imagine a world where Sony can sell games on the xbox, or Microsoft can sell games on the PS#. Oh wait, they kind of already can, I mean if Microsoft Game Studios wanted to release a game for the Playstation, they can. You’re not locked to the store in that you can buy physical copies of things still. But you’re right, if there were the equivalent of F-Droid or itch.io for the PS4, that’d be pretty sweet.
I mean if you treated the computers like virtual ‘malls’ where you have various stores where you can purchase wares, and you looked at the various platforms, you’d see things like Linux, where you’d have the Official Package store, where you have guards up to make sure black market goods aren’t smuggled in, you’d have Flatpak, where it’s sort of a bizarre, but controlled with some gatekeepers as well, but it’s a group of different sellers. You have Snap, where there is just one seller in there. Then you have Source install, which is just a extreme bizarre, everyone has code to share.
Contrast this to Apple, where it’s close to snap, where only one provider will distribute the wares to their patrons, and they charge a hefty price to have it on their ‘shelf’. Problem is of course, that if you have an Apple device, it’s the only place you can shop, and you can’t remove the shop from your device (as you can with snap).
leech,
I believe you mean bazaar?
We’ve discussed something similar over a decade ago, including the “mall” metaphor.
Thom is right, but I do think jgfenix is right that it probably won’t change anything macroscopicly. Most these ideas to increase the competitive balance don’t go anywhere, at least here in the US where regulators give big businesses everything and the little guys get squashed. Incumbents at the top oppose competitive markets and always fight to keep all the power and opportunities for themselves at the expense of everyone else. Competitors may be willing and able to build products & services that owners would want, but they’re not much they can do to overcome device restrictions designed to impede / block owners from going directly to competitors for software.
You can buy in physical but you still need Sony’s approval, you can’t bypass them.
Not quite, the main bar for game consoles is your game passes the technical certification, play testing, and actually be fun to play. Outside of indie games, the costs for that testing is believed to be quite steep (I think tens of thousands). If you have the money and your game is good, they won’t care. If it did come to court, the implosion of Atari would make a convincing argument against it. Meanwhile, Apple’s reasoning is clearly nothing more than anti-competitive tactics.
That’s not the point. You can’t sell a game without paying a fee to Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo. It’s the same situation as with Apple.
But legally, they have an enormous checklist to present to the judge with extremely fine details of why someone was rejected. Apple on the other hand has blatant examples of potential extortion and anti-competitive practices with things like “Telegram said that in 2016 Apple restricted the messaging app from launching a gaming platform on the grounds that it went against App Store rules. Telegram risked being deleted from the App Store and dismantled the venture.” Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo can’t pull your game and threaten things like this. Steam’s iphone app? Rejected because of “potential business conflicts” as Apple thought they might attempt to have their storefront on the app one day. Apple has no ground to stand on, while the legality of locking out others by the consoles has already been through the court system in Atari Games vs Nintendo. With Apple you can pay the fee and get rejected for any reason Apple comes up with. With consoles, you get an actual, extremely detailed list of every reason you might be rejected.
Another important fact is the console companies’ certification system actually works as intended to prevent shovelware from appearing, while the app store has tons of shovelware.
Apple did exactly this to the UK government and blocked access to the Bluetooth stack for a COVID track and trace app. The same access their Own solution uses. Their monopoly has literally cost lives.
The bigger problem was that the UK government decided not to use Apple/Google exposure notifications, and thus couldn’t and would have worked if they had. Now they are having to switch the app to use exposure notifications, and the uk government have wasted time, on something that would never work.
brobostigon,
I’m not familiar with it. Can you cite a specific source for your claim unambiguously proving the government’s app couldn’t work? (Besides the artificial restrictions manufacturers built into the platforms of course).
The NHSX solution (UK health service/government) worked perfectly well on Android phones. And the iOS limitations are artificial because they are what are used by Apples Own solution.
A high level (pay wall free) overview is available here
https://www.businessinsider.com/nhsx-contact-tracing-app-derailed-apple-google-bluetooth-system-2020-4?r=US&IR=T
This infographic is interesting. Apple was basically resulting to unfair practices for about a decade, and as soon as Spotify took the initial step, to take legal action, Apple already started to play nicer. IMHO Apple knows they are liable and hence i feel that Spotify has a shot.
https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
Geck,
I hope so, but I hope it doesn’t just help spotify…everyone should have the right to install applications from other sources without having to go through apple. Apple fans could still use apple’s app store of course, but it would be out of choice rather than coercion.
If there will be any financial settlements involved, that likely could be more targeted. But in general whatever decision the commission will make will affect all, not just Apple, Spotify and Telegram.
Or they could move to Android.
Both platforms have app parity. The biggest negative for Android is the horrible handset OEMs, but outside of a few, no one seems to mind that. For some people, that may be a plus.
Spotify is already available on Android. If you only like a couple of Android handsets, buy one of them? It’s not like you have more choice with an iPhone? Anyway, it’s fine if you use iPhone, Spotify just wants to compete on equal terms, you can after freely choose to use Spotify or Apple Music on iPhone.
Could it be Spotify is a valuable brand for a platform, and not having Spotify makes iOS vulnerable to defections to Android?
I’m guessing the brand name apps are more important for a mobile platform then ever. Apple realizes this, and they’re willing to release their grip a little bit, at least for a big brand like Spotify. Spotify leaving Apple would hurt iOS a lot more then it would hurt Spotify, and it could be the thing which tips the US market solidly in Android’s favor.
The days are over where there were platform exclusive apps which could drive sales, and most people don’t care about the platform that much. There is a little bit of ecosystem lockin, but not much since most apps derive their profits from subscriptions which are tied to an account rather then a device specific application.
Google and Apple haven’t been able to get their competing services to gain any traction, and they’re just a conduit to their respective mobile platforms. Ultimately, the people voted, and they picked a service which isn’t tied to any major platform.
Spotify more or less just wants to compete on equal terms. No more no less.
Why not go one tiny step further – make it illegal to distribute any software or firmware until there are at least 10 different malicious forks of it that look identical, to ensure that everybody is too scared to ever install or use any software, while simultaneously guaranteeing that nobody will ever be able to afford the cost of writing any new software? It’d probably only take 5 years before CS Uni degrees cease to exist (because who would be silly enough to get thousands of dollars of student debt when “career options” mean failing to find an employer that won’t be bankrupt before your job interview occurs?).
I mean honestly; if you’re going to destroy everything just because appropriate corrective action is already being initiated against Apple, why not be clear about your intentions?
Perfect reply to one of Thoms most crazy “snarky comments” ever!
I don’t think it is a coincidence that the above comment was written just after this:
“I’ve got a very special piece of hardware coming my way for review: a Blackbird Secure Desktop from Raptor Computing Systems. The Blackbird is a desktop PC with an IBM POWER9 processor that is open source from top to its very bottom – no firmware blobs, no management engines, no proprietary BIOS.” (source: https://www.osnews.com/story/132141/upcoming-review-something-powerful/)
Don’t get carried away Thom. Different tools for different tasks, choice and all
Heh. I would love to see Thom compare the Blackbird’s software/firmware (one instruction at a time) to its source code to verify that the installed software/firmware actually matches the source code. Even compiling & installing yourself isn’t a guarantee (e.g. wouldn’t be the first time a compiler was modified to inject “unknown” code while compiling).
Alternatively; maybe Thom should just download the source code, tamper with it, compile it, and install the modified version before returning the system – see if the next person that receives the system notices that “secure” means nothing unless you can authenticate installed binaries (maybe with some kind of management engine? Nah, that’d be silly.).
Flexver from Raptor Engineering.
https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/documentation/flexver_intro.pdf
Hrm – interesting.
Note that Thom’s “Upcoming review: something POWERful” claims “no management engine” (which is partly what I was reacting to in my previous post); but the “shielded area (that) contains the main FlexVer™ control FPGA, temporary storage (SRAM), and the system’s root TPM” described in that FlexVer document is a management engine.
After reading that FlexVer document; I’m still not sure if everyone who has physical access (everyone in the supply chain – manufacturer, retailer, couriers, …) can follow the “provisioning” steps to install modified firmware on the management engine that emulates but thwarts (or inject vulnerabilities into) future reprovisioning attempts (so a new owner thinks they provisioned it securely, but can’t). If not (if its impossible to install firmware on the management engine that didn’t come directly from the manufacturer) then it effectively ends up being “central root of (the local root of) trust”.
In other words; I’m still skeptical – it seems to have different attack vectors rather than being more secure or less secure; where “open source” either has no impact or makes it less secure (easier to tamper with).
@Brenden
Yes. Raptor acknowledges the utility of Intel’s management engine, but they dislike the lack of transparency. They’re entire position is that the x86 vendors are good, but they are not transparent. Raptor is transparent, and everything in the system can be audited.
They’re target market is not us, you know people who’s highest value info is their Twitter password, but people who run super secure facilities with actual secrets, like government agencies or certain government contractors. If they can sell a few to enthusiasts, that’s great.
The document is dripping with marketing hype, but that’s to be expected given it’s from the vendor.
That’s pretty much thing with security isn’t it? Just move the goalposts to make things better or at least different.
I’m not the one to ask about this. Security isn’t my forte.
Anyway, they have thought about your idea of a management engine though.
We should be able to reuse devices to reduce ewaste, and third-party FOSS firmware for the device, or devices which ship with FOSS firmware, are good ways to do that.
I see you’re an Android user.
AI will probably make CS degrees obsolete anyway, and if not AI, then low code environments for people who have no CS training.
We should be able to reuse devices to reduce ewaste; but most ewaste is caused by hardware upgrades (e.g. replacing your phone with a newer faster and/or more efficient model) or life expectancy of materials (e.g. batteries that eventually degrade and can’t hold a charge), or accidental physical damage.
FOSS could help to avoid the “vendor stopped caring and no longer provides updates (and just wants to sell you a new phone instead)” problem, but that’s a minor cause of ewaste, most consumers aren’t going to bother with (or trust) third party firmware anyway, and manufacturers that use “planned obsolescence” tactics to push future sales will just find an alternative (e.g. non-replaceable parts, third party firmware updates prevented by other means, etc). In fact I’d say that this problem exists because the majority of consumers don’t care and won’t switch to a competitor that provides long term support.
The only effective solution is for laws/governments to catch up (e.g. forbid various practices that cause ewaste, require and enforce acceptable support durations, etc). This is happening, but governments are slow and people are impatient.
Yes, it’s a multifaceted problem and simple proclamations don’t do it justice. 🙂
Devices not being repairable are part of the larger problem, but an obsolete device in working order can still be repurposed and be useful if the software can be replaced. Software and firmware is an easy place to start.
Vendor abandonment is my big pet peeve.
Small changes turn into large gains when compounded.
Probably not, but those of use with the skill will get more out of our equipment and good deals on used equipment.
Yes, consumers are mainly price driven. Whatever is cheap is best.
It’s almost like our economic system which promotes consumerism is the problem.
Almost, yes.
I personally think that the economic system (e.g. capitalism) is fundamentally fine (once you add various safeguards/laws against various anti-competitive practices); and the true evil is marketing. Specifically, consumers should be comparing statistics and ratings created by neutral/unbiased sources and choosing the best products for them, so that companies with the best products and best ratings make the most profit (and crappy companies don’t make profit and have to change to compete). Sadly; marketing distorts consumers’ ability to choose, resulting in crappy companies with crappy products (that pay a lot for marketing and pass the additional cost onto the consumer) making more profit while good companies with good products and fair pricing suffer, and resulting in significantly less reason for companies to care about being good or providing good products with fair pricing.
Unless you are living under a rock, you ought to know FOSS generates jobs. Hence FOSS won’t prevent paying off student loans.
I guess someone has to delete the license headers before the FOSS code is merged. 😛
Do you have any kind of evidence to suggest that’s not a fantasy?
There are only 4 ways to make FOSS financially viable that I know of:
1) Use a client-server model with a FOSS client and make people pay to access the server, so you get paid regardless of what the client is. This can be viable for some types of smartphone apps, but not most.
2) Add the cost of software development to the hardware costs, so you can deceive suckers into thinking that the software is “free” when they pay. This isn’t viable for any third party smartphone apps.
3) Make software that is so awful that customers are willing to pay for service contracts, then inflate the cost of the service contracts to cover the cost of the software. This isn’t viable for any third party smartphone apps (too much competition to allow awful software).
4) Become a beggar (rely on donations). I don’t think this is viable for third party smartphone apps (most people don’t donate and don’t like nagware) but I could be mistaken.
Mostly what FOSS does is rely on stupid people being scammed by marketing hype (who think they’re getting something for free) to destroy a larger number of jobs at “pay an honest/obvious price for what you use” companies while creating a smaller number of jobs at dishonest “pay a hidden/undisclosed price elsewhere” companies.
For an example; Linux did create some jobs. It destroyed Sun, Sparc, SCO, Novell, parts of HP, and cost more jobs at a many smaller/less well known companies; and did so much damage to competition between operating systems that no new operating systems for servers have been created for 3 whole decades; but (if you’re willing to ignore the barren wasteland of torched villages left in its wake) it did create some jobs.
C’mon it’s 2020 and you make arguments like we are in the 90s. Companies such as Google, Red Hat & IBM are literary making billions out of FOSS. High market share of the whole IT industry runs on FOSS stack, a lot of hosting services offer FOSS. A lot of popular web services run on FOSS stack and use FOSS programing languages to build functionality and to be operational. Due to Azure Microsoft has found new love for Linux. A lot of FOSS programing languages are dominating the popularity charts. FOSS affects education sector in positive ways … All this doesn’t operate by itself, millions of jobs are involved.
Google? They’re making billions out of spam, and providing proprietary services that feed data into their marketing machine helps them do that. FOSS is just a way for them to avoid paying for the pieces of software that are irrelevant to their business model.
IBM are making billions writing proprietary enterprise software under contracts for large companies and governments (mostly in Java from what I’ve heard); and providing proprietary enterprise hardware and service contracts to run it on. They also sell smaller servers, etc. They literally couldn’t give a shit what the OS is as long as they make $$ on the hardware and $$ on the closed source software running on top of the OS.
RedHat aren’t making billions (it’s more like half of a billion profit annually). IBM will probably end up acquiring RedHat and ripping it apart, just to stifle competition.
Yes, and …? I never said FOSS lacked market share.
Yes, and …? I never said FOSS doesn’t involve jobs, only that it cost more jobs than it created (e.g. destroyed 2 million jobs to create 1 millions jobs).
@Brendan
No, it did not. FOSS never destroyed 2 million jobs to create 1 million jobs. Microsoft, Apple … Their net worth is highest in the history. You are repeating some memes from the 90s, mostly spread by Microsoft, and even Microsoft just recently admitted, they were on the wrong side of the history! Bottom line, if you graduate in 2020 and need to worry about the student loans. If desired, you can get employed by one of the tech companies, to write FOSS, down to the firmware. By doing that you don’t hurt the economy or destroy jobs.
No, you’re deluded (e.g. assuming that the number of people employed in 1990 would’ve remained constant if FOSS didn’t exist, when it would’ve grown, and would’ve grown more than it has with FOSS).
FOSS “wins” for marketing reasons – it’s more efficient in general (less jobs due to more code sharing), exploits more unpaid labor (cheaper per work done), seems more attractive to consumers (the illusion of “free” vs. knowing the amount you pay), and prevents fair competition against honest “pay a fair price for what you use” software by hiding its costs elsewhere.
The simple fact is that by sharing more source code (because its open source, and because fair competition is prevented) less source code is written, so less people are employed to write source code. The same applies to all other areas (documentation, support, management, …). E.g. you’d create almost 10 times as many jobs if there’s 10 times as many competing products (because everyone isn’t just recycling/extending the same open source pieces to reduce costs).
Except for ransomware. 🙂 There’ll be a special exception in for all the scammers and spammers who are rascally little scamps.
iOS and Android are open source, mostly anyway, and that hasn’t stopped anything. Companies can build all sorts of proprietary stuff on top of FOSS.
I get what you’re saying, and fully support it.
However, it’s not a magic bullet. The app store is the tip of the iceberg. Apple and Google have built support systems which pump data to handsets and from handsets which can’t be easily replaced, and they’ll keep using that to gatekeep.
Sure it’s easy to rage at the app store, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s insignificant.
Telegram files needs to screen by antivirus or malware.Thanks for letting us know about this issue. https://sexyactiongame.club/
what someone in the EU needs todo is force apple to allow “side loading” of unsigned apps in the same way android apk files can be copid and loaded via pc or directly from sdcard.
apples iron fist would crumble and their anti competitive monopoly wouldn’t matter if it was only enforced on the “official market”.
I’m all for that one one condition. Apple must NOT be forced to service phones with side loaded apps. Not with the apps installed and not if a side loaded app has ever been installed.
Allowing/being forced to allow such a “feature” should require an online secured and 2-factor authenticated apple-ID login that permanently voids any and all warrantee service on the device. Also blocking it from any trade in/trade up offers from Apple.
Apple has no reason to service your borked device because you wanted a pirate version of Angry Birds or a fake hacked Spotify.
lostinlodos,
Allowing companies to revoke warranties for reasons that are completely unrelated to the defect is too much of a cop out. If it’s a genuine hardware defect, consumer protection laws should compel companies including apple to honor warranties and service contracts regardless of the software owners have installed. It should work more like the car industry where manufacturers are legally prohibited from denying warranty coverage over arbitrary reasons that are unrelated and non-causal to the repairs that are needed.
If there’s a hardware mod, well it’s understandable why apple wouldn’t take it back, but with respect to software that would be nonsense since it can be reflashed to stock and be just as good as the next guy’s phone. These phones would likely be re-flashed anyways, so there’s no reason to block such phones on tradeins. Obviously apple’s real motive is simply to block & discourage competing software channels. Regardless, if consumers did get an explicit legal right to side load (there’s no guaranty that we ever will), apple would almost undoubtedly find itself in court if it punished users exercising their rights.
That’s a red herring, there are a lot of reasons owners might want more control over their hardware and as owners it ought to be their right. It disappoints me to see how readily some people give up their rights to corporations…this lays the groundwork for “1984”, Orwell assumed these threats to privacy and control would come from the government, but they’re actually sneaking into our lives through increasingly powerful and omnipotent private sector corporations 🙁