What’s the European Commission to do when one of the largest corporations in the world has not only been breaking its laws continually, but also absolutely refuses to comply, uses poison pills in its malicious compliance, badmouths you in the press through both official – and unofficial – employees? Well, you start telling that corporation exactly what it needs to do to comply, down to the most minute implementation details, and in the process take away any form of wiggle room.
Steven Troughton-Smith, an absolute wizard when it comes to the inner workings of Apple’s various platforms and allround awesome person, dove into the European Commission’s proposed next steps when it comes to dealing with Apple’s refusal to comply with EU law – the Digital Markets Act, in particular – and it’s crystal-clear that the EC is taking absolutely no prisoners. They’re not only telling Apple exactly what kind of interoperability measures it must take, down to the API level, but they’re also explicitly prohibiting Apple from playing games through complex contracts and nebulous terms to try and make interoperability a massive burden.
As an example of just how detailed the EC is getting with Apple, here’s what the company needs to do to make AirDrop interoperable:
Apple shall provide a protocol specification that gives third parties all information required to integrate, access, and control the AirDrop protocol within an application or service (including as part of the operating system) running on a third-party connected physical device in order to allow these applications and services to send files to, and receive files from, an iOS device.
↫ European Commission
In addition, Apple must make any new features or changes to AirDrop available to third parties at the same time as it releases them:
For future functionalities of or updates to the AirDrop feature, Apple shall make them available to third parties no later than at the time they are made available to any Apple connected physical device.
↫ European Commission
These specific quotes only cover AirDrop, but similar demands are made about things like AirPlay, the easy pairing process currently reserved for Apple’s own accessories, and so on. I highly suggest reading the source document, or at the very least the excellent summary thread by Steven, to get an even better idea of what the EC is demanding here. The changes must be made in the next major version of iOS, or at the very latest before the end of 2025. The EC really goes into excruciating detail about how Apple is supposed to implement these interoperability features, and leaves very little to no wiggle room for Apple shenanigans.
The EC is also clearly fed up with Apple’s malicious compliance and other tactics to violate the spirit of the DMA:
Apple shall not impose any restrictions on the type or use case of the software application and connected physical device that can access or makeuse of the features listed in this Document.
Apple shall not undermine effective interoperability with the 11 features set out in this Document by behaviour of a technical nature. In particular, Apple shall actively take all the necessary actions to allow effective interoperability with these features.
[…]Apple shall not impose any contractual or commercial restrictions that would be opaque, unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory towards third parties or otherwise defeat the purpose of enabling effective interoperability. In particular, Apple shall not restrict business users, directly or indirectly, to make use of any interoperability solution in their existing apps via an automatic update.
↫ European Commission
What I find most interesting about all of this is that it could have been so easily avoided by Apple. Had Apple approached the EU and the DMA with the same kind of respect, grace, and love Apple and Tim Cook clearly reserve for totalitarian dictatorships like China, Apple could’ve enabled interoperability in such a way that it would still align with most of Apple’s interests. They would’ve avoided the endless stream of negative press this fruitless “fight” with the EU is generating, and it would’ve barely impacted Apple’s bottom line. Put it on one of those Apple microsites that capture your scrolling, boast about how amazing Apple is and how much they love interoperability, and it most likely would’ve been a massive PR win.
Instead, under the mistaken impression that this is a business negotiation, Apple tried to cry, whine, throw tamper tantrums, and just generally act like horrible spoiled brats just because someone far, far more powerful than they are told them “no” for once. Now they’ve effectively been placed under guardianship, and have to do exactly as the European Commission tells them to, down to the API level, without any freedom to make their own choices.
The good thing is that the EC’s journey to make iOS a better and more capable operating system continues. We all benefit.
Well, us EU citizens, anyway.
Thom Holwerda,
I’m not so sure. The things the EU wants apple to change have become the core of apple’s business model. All of the engineering serves this purpose. Controlling the market with anticompetitve restrictions has made them trillions…As I see it the EU’s goal of breaking up apple restrictions is completely at odds with apple’s DNA.
It really makes me wonder how this is all going to go down.
Yeah, here in the US we are always being screwed over by corporations. But then again it seems like large blocks of voters are in favor of advancing the corporate power agenda anyways. It’s hard to understand why people vote against their own interests :-/
> It’s hard to understand why people vote against their own interests :-/
Actually not that hard.
Those with agendas know how to distract voters with shiny baubles.
Distracted voters then miss the deeper parts of the agendas that will affect them — often much later.
ponk,
I know you’re right, but it’s so disappointing that this kind of manipulation works. This is how fascism arises from democracy 🙁
It’s an appropriate time to invoke Godwin’s law.
> In particular, Apple shall not restrict business users, directly or indirectly, to make use of any interoperability solution in their existing apps
Apple discontinues all the apps and releases new apps that do the same thing.
> For future functionalities of or updates to the AirDrop feature, Apple shall make them available to third parties no later than at the time they are made available to any Apple connected physical device.
Apple discontinues AirDrop and re-releases it under new name – “see? it’s a completely different feature!”
Or they will only implement it – within the EU.
This is how i see it play out. Apple is going to Apple for as long as they can. They have the bank to lawyer up for years to come.
We saw Apple’s practices of blocking during covid when they forced UK and other governments to use their services to access the Bluetooth functionality fully.
It delayed UK track and trace by months, and caused lives to be lost as a result. What UK was left with was a sub-standard system that didn’t produce they information that would have helped stop the pandemic spreading further.
The UK/EU have the issue that to many high level decision makers are Apple phone users. And don’t want the knock-on of limiting the company.
The only way to make apple change is practices is via the bank. Block sale of new devices until they are compliant. The EU is a sufficiently large market that Apple would almost certainly produce what they said was impossible within a couple of weeks.
Adurbe,
NFC has been blocked too, not to mention apps have often been blocked for competing with apple. They’ve gone so far as to ban newspapers that don’t charge news subscriptions through apple. And then there are all the hardware restrictions that block owners from repairing their phones even with authentic donor parts. Apple leverages consumer restrictions at every level to maximize profits at the expense of consumers and competition while never having to compete on merit in a free market.
Governmental response has been dreadfully lacking for decades, including in the EU, but at least it’s better late then never and I’m glad to see europe finally tackling these issues in more recent years. Other countries need to step it up too…not that I have much confidence they will – there’s so much corruption. Companies can just drag things out until they get favorable conditions in the political cycle. Just look at the how our corporate executives including Tim Apple are flocking to maralago to curry favor.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tech-ceos-meta-amazon-donate-millions-inauguration/
Incidentally I worry whether this could happen in the EU, although I’m not that familiar with European politics. Besides I’m not sure if they would cave for an american company?
But american voters have been successfully duped again. The number one issue was people struggling economically, which makes sense but they’ve elected one of the most corrupt politicians of our time who’s primary agenda is going to be another massive transfer of wealth from lower and middle classes to the elites. It’s mass stupidity, ugh.
I expected to read news about sideloading, I am dissapoint.