New EU Law Could Force Apple to Allow Other App Stores, Sideloading, and iMessage Interoperability

[hishnash]

3 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

I never understood why apple couldn't have sideloading and stuff as a special menu dev or experimental menu. 

you can side load right now, however you need to re-load every 7 days (unless you have a dev account).  Any users can sign any app to run on thierd device there is however no easy one tap install, you need to do the signing and you cant do this on the phone (well you can but there is no app in the App Store that does it and apple will not permit any App Store app that does it...) so you need to start the process by using a Mac, PC or linux box (possibly an android phone?) to sign the app that can then sign any other app for you. 
 

3 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

Or even root access. 

Given some of the payment services apple provide (like accepting contactless payments) apple have made it basically illegal for them to let users have root access (at least with any of these features active... strike laws about payment terminal exist for good reason).

 

[Ydfhlx]

Makes me wonder who is actually running the company. Is it Apple, or is it EU? Because it is pretty obvious that governments running giant corporations has been tried and doesn't work.

 

If you don't like that you can't sideload apps, don't buy apple. In a free market it should be as simple as that.

[mr moose]

43 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

Makes me wonder who is actually running the company. Is it Apple, or is it EU? Because it is pretty obvious that governments running giant corporations has been tried and doesn't work.

 

If you don't like that you can't sideload apps, don't buy apple. In a free market it should be as simple as that.

 

It's all fine and dandy for consumers to decide if they want a feature or not on a phone.  The problem however is that developers don't get that choice, they have to sell their software through the app store or not at all.  They have to abide every rule apple makes or they can kiss half the market goodbye.   IOS is the only operating system for consumers that prevents developers from being able offer products directly to the consumer, and that market share is not insignificant. 

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Ydfhlx said:

Makes me wonder who is actually running the company. Is it Apple, or is it EU? Because it is pretty obvious that governments running giant corporations has been tried and doesn't work.

 

If you don't like that you can't sideload apps, don't buy apple. In a free market it should be as simple as that.

You could say the same thing about any regulation or legislation really.

The sad truth is that companies can not be completely unregulated, because they will end up using and abusing the powers they have to further their own agenda (make money) at the expense of others. 

A lot of countries has regulations regarding minimum wages, because if not then companies would pay their employees terrible wages. That is the government "running" companies by telling them how to treat their employees.

A lot of countries has regulations regarding how toxic chemicals should be disposed of. That is a government telling companies how to handle the material that the company owns. 

 

 

It is important to not view the world in black and white terms where "regulations = bad".

It is also important to note that the "free market" usually does not mean "no regulations", at least not in spirit. Free market (in spirit) usually means that companies are allowed to compete with one another and customers have choice. Monopolies and cartels for example are direct threat to the free market and because of this it is crucial to have regulations that makes forming such things difficult or impossible. Because without those regulations we will end up in a non-free market where customers do not have any choice and all the power lies with one or a few companies colluding.

 

 

 

 

Anyway I think this sounds good. If this gets enforced then I would actually be more willing to buy an iPhone.

[Holmes108]

14 hours ago, Sauron said:

Why? Why do you think it's bad to legislate good things? Why is the line drawn at "safety" and "essential goods" but no further? Seems pretty arbitrary to me.

 

Drawing the line at life and death seems "arbitrary" to you? I can understand the other side, disagreeing with me, and wanting government oversight to reach further. I don't agree with it, because I think they can't take care of anything without being either incompetent or corrupt, but I can understand why people might feel that way. But the idea that regulating say, videogame prices, or what type of USB port a device has, and regulating price gouging on medicine being equal seems pretty disingenuous to me.

 

 

[Doobeedoo]

I won't buy iPhone but that would be fun to see how they, comply.

In a way you can say it's their platform and all but blocking some basic things is a meme in the end. In the end consumers feed this and thus them. 

I agree about exclusivity bs with stores and licenses in general. You should be able to buy once and use anywhere. Stores should compete with other features, extra goodies etc. 

[captain_to_fire]

I've said it on a status update and I'll say it again, USB C is nice but allowing 3rd party app stores, sideloading, and iMessage interoperability will simply ruin the iPhone experience because there would be nothing that will differentiate the iPhone from other phones. The EU has a lot in their plate including the issues of the war ongoing in Eastern Europe, it’s time for them to focus their efforts on that and let tech companies do their own thing such as App Stores. If I want a more open phone experience I can always get an Android phone. The smooth-brained EU has a lot of problems to address, telling tech companies what apps to run on a phone shouldn't be one of it. What's next? Force Apple to sell their in-house M and A chips to the likes of Android OEMs? I bet that majority of the people using iPhones know what they're getting into and they're most likely fine that their only source of apps is the App Store.

[Sauron]

24 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Drawing the line at life and death seems "arbitrary" to you?

I mean, yes. We don't draw the line at life and death when legislating human interactions. If I steal your car you'll probably survive, that doesn't mean I should be allowed to do it.

26 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

I can understand the other side, disagreeing with me, and wanting government oversight to reach further. I don't agree with it, because I think they can't take care of anything without being either incompetent or corrupt, but I can understand why people might feel that way.

You can hardly get any more corrupt than a company that literally makes money from doing something. If you think a politician or government official might allow something bad for a share of the profit why do you believe a company won't do something bad for all of the profit? In general I agree that we should not overregulate harmless behavior but that's not what's going on here; the harm is clearly quantifiable and perpetrated by an entity that only a government has the power to hinder.

30 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

But the idea that regulating say, videogame prices, or what type of USB port a device has, and regulating price gouging on medicine being equal seems pretty disingenuous to me.

There can be degrees of harm and, proportionally, degrees of regulation. Fraud should not be legal just because homicide is worse.

6 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

I've said it on a status update and I'll say it again, USB C is nice but allowing 3rd party app stores, sideloading, and iMessage interoperability will simply ruin the iPhone experience because there would be nothing that will differentiate the iPhone from other phones.

If what differentiates the iphone are features that make it unequivocally worse then there's something weird going on here... why does it ruin your experience to have an objectively better phone?

7 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

The EU has a lot in their plate including the issues of the war ongoing in Eastern Europe, it’s time for them to focus their efforts on that and let tech companies do their own thing such as App Stores.

What kind of argument is this? Governments are and must be able to do multiple things, even of variable importance, at once.

9 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

If I want a more open phone experience I can always get an Android phone.

What if Google also makes anticonsumer choices (it does)? Where will you turn?

10 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

What's next? Force Apple to sell their in-house M and A chips to the likes of Android OEMs?

You say it as though this would have downsides for anyone other than Apple.

[Holmes108]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I mean, yes. We don't draw the line at life and death when legislating human interactions. If I steal your car you'll probably survive, that doesn't mean I should be allowed to do it.

You can hardly get any more corrupt than a company that literally makes money from doing something. If you think a politician or government official might allow something bad for a share of the profit why do you believe a company won't do something bad for all of the profit? In general I agree that we should not overregulate harmless behavior but that's not what's going on here; the harm is clearly quantifiable and perpetrated by an entity that only a government has the power to hinder.

There can be degrees of harm and, proportionally, degrees of regulation. Fraud should not be legal just because homicide is worse.

 

 

There's a lot of straw men in there.

[Sauron]

8 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

 

There's a lot of straw men in there.

Where? I just answered your points, with quotes, lmao

[Dracarris]

14 hours ago, Caroline said:

Fanboys in a way have a similar argument against these regulations because their $1000+ phone would be able to do exactly the same as the peasant's $100 phone, and that's "not fair", somehow, idk I'm not rich.

Ah yes, the daily horseradish of iphones costing over 1k.

 

The cheapest iphone currently costs 429$. Between that and the 1000$ mark are around 10 models/configurations.

Several Android high-end phones cost north of 1k, with Samsung up to 1.5k, excluding folding phones.

[Dracarris]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

So you're fine with going back to the old way of buying major upgrades separately? E.g. If you buy Office 2016 and if you want Office 2019 then you need to buy Office 2019 despite "owning" Office 2016.

Oh hell, yes. I very very rarely need any of the new fancy features of new versions. I'd be fine with Office 2016 and Adobe CS6.

 

Fuck software subscription models or at least give us an option for perpetual licenses.

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

So you're fine with going back to the old way of buying major upgrades separately? E.g. If you buy Office 2016 and if you want Office 2019 then you need to buy Office 2019 despite "owning" Office 2016.

At least I had the option to keep using Office 2016 forever. Now if you decide to cancel the subscription, you have no version of Office you can install. And if you actually use "Office" with exchange, SOL.

 

This problem is worse with Adobe, who doesn't offer ANY perpetual license, whatsoever. So you are screwed if the version of Photoshop or Premiere Pro your clients use are different. If you want to keep your clients, you are paying for CC, if you like it or not.

 

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Some developers (I am not in favour of this BTW but I am aware of this practice) currently sell programs to customers at different pricing depending on if they want to buy a license that works on multiple platforms or just one.

This is just a scummy way to price discriminate against a platform. In case you're not aware, countries outside the US are often made to pay 2-3x the cost for the exact same software, and parallel imports are a very big thing. Especially with physical game software.

 

I'll give you an insane example:

If you want to play Final Fantasy 14, you have to buy the game at full retail price, for Windows, THREE TIMES if you want to move from one PC platform (PC) to another PC platform (PC-Steam) or Mac, or PS4. There is literately nothing different between the steam and non-steam version. Just the game is launched by Steam. The Mac version is just the PC version with a commercial version of WINE.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

E.g. You can right now buy a Geekbench license for Windows only (or Mac only, or Linux only) for $9.99 or for Windows, Mac, and Linux for $14.99.

 

Wouldn't this increase pricing for those programs by forcing devs to offer the more expensive package without offering the cheaper package for fewer OSes?

 

And if it did effectively increase pricing for these programs, would you be willing to accept the price increase in exchange for forcing the dev to sell a license that works across platforms?

 

The developers should not be offering versions for different platforms that are the same product at different prices. The only reason they have is because the iOS app store started with a "everything is 99 cents" and is no longer the case. Geekbench is actually worse about it, because they release new versions of the software, where they've only changed the version number and the "baseline reference" when they clearly did it to make people buy it additional times. They are not the only mobile-software developer to do this. There's at least two other programs I originally bought on my iPad on iOS9 or earlier which which do not work and come up with "buy the new version (Which is 20x more expensive)" message.

 

 

 

[Holmes108]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Where? I just answered your points, with quotes, lmao

C'mon man, you're talking as if my POV somehow relates to legalizing fraud, and comparing the government telling a company how to design their product to stealing cars? It's not a good faith conversation. I could take the side of pro regulation to some logical extremes too, but it wouldn't be helpful or honest. Time to agree to disagree.

[WhitetailAni]

10 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

Or even root access. 

r/w access to the root filesystem is not possible anymore. Apple added a protection that makes it so any changes are undone after a reboot - and for your changes to take effect you have to reboot.

access as root user is though.

10 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

I never understood why apple couldn't have sideloading and stuff as a special menu dev or experimental menu. 

They can, they just don't want to. iOS 16 requires you to enable a setting called Developer Mode for sideloaded apps to work (yes, you CAN sideload they just expire after a week unless you fork over $99/year for a paid developer account, then they stay signed as long as you have the dev account).

 

Onto my personal opinion.

I don't want this.

You know how Apple kicked Fortnite off the app store? Instead of using the App Store to get your apps, now you need to sideload the Epic Games store, and the EA store, and the Origin store, and now there's fifty different ways to get malicious apps and I guarantee the managers of the other stores won't care about malware on their platform.

 

The developer of AltStore, Riley Testut put it well: "Sideloading needs to be the exception, not the norm."

 

EDIT: Apple doesn't have to do anything until March 6, 2024.

[Holmes108]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

It is important to not view the world in black and white terms where "regulations = bad".

It is also important to note that the "free market" usually does not mean "no regulations", at least not in spirit. 

 

 

This is the crux of it, really. For my own opinions, it really just depends on a case by case basis. When that happens there are always going to be a bunch of opinions. Some people are just blindly against all regulations. Other's blindly for them (as long as they benefit, typically). But as with most things, there's lot's of grey, and nuance.

 

Once thing that's for sure though, is that it is complicated. Most of us just look at a situation, and say "Well clearly this will lead to X". But truth is, most regulation (or equally lack thereof) can often have far reaching consequences that aren't always immediately obvious, which is why it's good for people on both sides to keep an open mind, and have a good discussion. Sometimes something will come up that we didn't even think of.

[Sauron]

9 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

C'mon man, you're talking as if my POV somehow relates to legalizing fraud, and comparing the government telling a company how to design their product to stealing cars? It's not a good faith conversation. I could take the side of pro regulation to some logical extremes too, but it wouldn't be helpful or honest. Time to agree to disagree.

A moment ago you were arguing to only legislate if it's a matter of life or death so yes, fraud does fall in the category of things that framework would allow. I wasn't even implying that though, all I was saying there is that just because a crime is worse than another doesn't mean the lesser crime should be allowed.

 

And no, you can't take my position to any extreme because I never said I support any and all regulation. I support good regulation that has positive outcomes and I don't agree with the idea that just because it's enforced by the government it's bad. The position you outlined is on the other hand simply doesn't hold water under even the slightest scrutiny; the moment I pointed out it doesn't work that way in any other situation and gave you examples you want regulated even if they're not life or death situations you fell apart.

11 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

You know how Apple kicked Fortnite off the app store? Instead of using the App Store to get your apps, now you need to sideload the Epic Games store, and the EA store, and the Origin store, and now there's fifty different ways to get malicious apps and I guarantee the managers of the other stores won't care about malware on their platform.

What happened to simply not using things that are bad? Android has allowed sideloading since the start and yet mainstream apps that require sideloading anything can be counted on one hand. For that matter I'd also support regulation that prevents developers from tying their products to their storefronts since that is also a monopolistic practice; you should be able to get fortnite without the epic store or whatever.

 

Oh, and don't make me laugh about Apple caring about malware on the app store, there's plenty of evidence they don't care and their controls are incredibly superficial.

19 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

The developer of AltStore, Riley Testut put it well: "Sideloading needs to be the exception, not the norm."

It is on Android. If developers are so averse to distributing on the App Store that they'd rather lose customers by forcing a sideload then Apple should think very hard about what they're doing wrong.

[Holmes108]

7 minutes ago, Sauron said:

A moment ago you were arguing to only legislate if it's a matter of life or death so yes, fraud does fall in the category of things that framework would allow. I wasn't even implying that though, all I was saying there is that just because a crime is worse than another doesn't mean the lesser crime should be allowed.

 

And no, you can't take my position to any extreme because I never said I support any and all regulation.

Incorrect, I said that those are the types of regulations I support most "In general" and that I "just don't tend to be on the side of regulations" that are less urgent. I've never said anything in absolutes, but keep trying to paint me as some extremist and yourself as a reasonable moderate. Again, bad faith.

 

 

[Brooksie359]

17 hours ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

By this logic then you should have no problem with companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google becoming monopolies and absorbing every other tech company out there giving you less choice and giving them full control. Because that's what you'll end up with if you just let bussiness run how they see fit, the biggest ones will become monopolies and absorb everything else around them to maintain their leadership. While definitely not perfect, regulation of business is definitely needed in many cases. At the end of the day giving the consumer more choice and protection isn't bad.

Everything in moderation. Even water is poisonous at large quantities for humans. Personally think this is a bit too far as I believe apples uniqueness that got them where they are today is having alot of their stuff locked down. The design philosophy was to create an experience and to do that they made alot of the stuff locked down and uniform to make the experience consistent. Now they are being forced to overcomplicate things by adding side loading and sorta ruining part of what made the iPhone unique. They are basically forcing the iPhone to be more like an andriod phone because people complain when I would guess the majority of iPhone users don't care. 

[Sauron]

7 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Incorrect, I said that those are the types of regulations I support most "In general" and that I "just don't tend to be on the side of regulations" that are less urgent.

"In general" and "tend to" are not very good descriptors of your position. If you don't "tend to" be on the side of regulations that are not strictly about life and death, why is that? I think I've given you quite a few examples where that is clearly not true and the vast majority of law would fall outside that category anyway.

17 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

I've never said anything in absolutes, but keep trying to paint me as some extremist and yourself as a reasonable moderate. Again, bad faith.

Oh really?

Quote

I also don't agree with all this regulation, and in general believe that people should be able to run their business how they see fit (with some obvious exceptions relating to safety, essential goods, etc). 

any reading of this would conclude that you don't want regulations on businesses unless they cause safety hazards or provide essential goods. It may not be what you meant but it is what you wrote. If it's not what you meant and instead you think that individual regulation on businesses can be good even if it's not about life or death then we just agree... and I don't see what issue you'd take with this instance.

[Holmes108]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

Everything in moderation. Even water is poisonous at large quantities for humans. Personally think this is a bit too far as I believe apples uniqueness that got them where they are today is having alot of their stuff locked down. The design philosophy was to create an experience and to do that they made alot of the stuff locked down and uniform to make the experience consistent. Now they are being forced to overcomplicate things by adding side loading and sorta ruining part of what made the iPhone unique. They are basically forcing the iPhone to be more like an andriod phone because people complain when I would guess the majority of iPhone users don't care. 

 

Yeah, even the USB port thing... I don't personally agree with it, but I can see the argument, even if nothing else but because of the environment (assuming it truly will help with that), but regulating something like "imessage interoperability"?? Seems like a real overstep to me, and not where I'd personally want my tax dolllars going. 

 

As I said before, case by case. But some seem sillier than others.

[wanderingfool2]

18 hours ago, TheawesomeMCB said:

This regulation is necessary I feel though. When you get companies like apple that have this much power, it could make people really upset if they change something. Todays market is mostly either an iPhone or android. And if one of the two is causing problems that is extreme anti consumer behavior something has to be done.

I think the DMA could actually be bad overall.

 

I don't mind forcing Apple into some of their anti-competitive practices, but I feel that this could be used to force some pretty bad technologies/weaknesses onto a device.

 

While I'm not against sideloading, I do feel that it could lead to issues (and have a large uptick in piracy) and I feel that a company should be allowed to decide whether or not they allow sideloading.  At the same time, I don't feel that they should force all in app purchases to be through Apple if the decision is made not to offer 3rd parties.  Also by not allowing 3rd parties, they should have to separate their App divisions, where they don't allow for the use of secret API's or using policies to eliminate competing apps/competitors.

 

I think that there needs to be some interoperability, but I do think that instead of a general regulation of a catch all, it should really be dealt on a case by case basis.  Like FaceTime/iMessage I don't mind being exclusive for Apple, but they should be forced to adopt things such as RCS into the system.

 

 

 

On a similar note, the DMA I think could have drastic consequences as well (which is why I'm against generalized regulation).  As an example, in protecting personal data, they are preventing personal using data gathered interally from being combined with external data.  So that means collecting data to verify someone is human, if I read the rules correctly, and also using 3rd party data to also confirm it isn't allowed.  i.e. more bots.

Quote

(b)
    

combine personal data from the relevant core platform service with personal data from any further core platform services or from any other services provided by the gatekeeper or with personal data from third-party services;

(c)
    

cross-use personal data from the relevant core platform service in other services provided separately by the gatekeeper, including other core platform services, and vice versa; and

It's vague enough that I could see a new influx of bots hitting platforms (as strictly speaking you would only be able to rely on information from the platform itself to determine if someone looks like a bot).

 

 

[Donut417]

On 11/2/2022 at 4:28 PM, TheawesomeMCB said:

It’s either comply with the DMA laws. Or leave Europe

Or they tie it up in European courts for months while they figure out a solution. What ever solution they figure out will be to the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. Meaning they will find a way to fuck over consumers. Also keep in mind that if Apple has facilities or stores over there, leaving Europe means Europeans loosing jobs. 

 

That being said, I dont understand why Apple is so resistant on side loading. I mean, not everyone is going to do it. They will still have a lot of people who will choose to use their App Store. Not everyone wants to go thru the trouble of Side Loading. Also, they can refuse to provide support for people who side load. If they choose to side load and fuck up their device, well its not on Apple. Thats kinda how it works with Cable Modems in the US, if you choose to use your own, the cable company will provision it and some MAY provide firmware updates, but most of the time support will blame your modem for any issue. 

[Kisai]

 

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

That being said, I dont understand why Apple is so resistant on side loading. I mean, not everyone is going to do it. They will still have a lot of people who will choose to use their App Store.

Because it's the same as "just run it as admin" kind of troubleshooting. Once you have games and apps that require sideloading, people will just leave the sideloading unlocked, leaving the door wide open to other garbage being pushed. Do I need to remind people of how many games and apps have ads in them?

 

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

 

Not everyone wants to go thru the trouble of Side Loading. Also, they can refuse to provide support for people who side load. If they choose to side load and fuck up their device, well its not on Apple. Thats kinda how it works with Cable Modems in the US, if you choose to use your own, the cable company will provision it and some MAY provide firmware updates, but most of the time support will blame your modem for any issue. 

 

That's a completely different situation. For a long long time, people didn't want the cable/dsl modems the ISP gave you because their firewalls blocked you from running your own servers, be it web and ftp, or game hosting. Then the UPnP was recommended to be disabled, thus making it damn near impossible to "run a server". If you wanted to have your WiFi or your own router, you had to make sure you got the older, more specific modem that didn't include anything. These WiFi modems we get now are at least a magnitude less crappy than they were 20 years ago when the hardware sucked and you needed the WiFi to be separate.

 

[Donut417]

34 minutes ago, Kisai said:

eaving the door wide open to other garbage being pushed. Do I need to remind people of how many games and apps have ads in them?

Thats on the user not Apple. Apple shouldn't care if the user screw up their own device. 

 

35 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If you wanted to have your WiFi or your own router, you had to make sure you got the older, more specific modem that didn't include anything.

Thats not correct. You dont need to buy older modems. There are plenty of new cable modems. Also what ISP's give you is a gateway technically speaking. A standard cable modem has no router function built in. 

 

37 minutes ago, Kisai said:

magnitude less crappy than they were 20 years ago when the hardware sucked and you needed the WiFi to be separate.

20 years ago my ISP didnt even offer a gateway. For a long time it was just a standard modem or a eMTA when we added voice services.