Apple managed to get approvals for medical devices and studies (highly regulated everywhere), custom radios and satellite communication (highly regulated everywhere).
Apple already has machine translation, voice recognition, voice recording, and dictation features shipped in the EU.
But when EU hurt Apple's ego by daring to demand to give users freedom to run software they want on devices they bought (that could break them out of a very lucrative duopoly), Apple suddenly is a helpless baby who cannot find a way to make a new UI available in the EU.
There are multiple issues at play.
The two main issues are:
1 - Sometimes processing is done in private cloud servers for complex translations. Apple is not allowed to do that for EU users. Full Stop. Even if it were not prohibited by EU law, you still have issue 2.
2 - It's unclear whether or not Apple can charge. If another dev uses the APIs, and it triggers a call to the cloud, who pays for the inference? Until Apple gains clarity on that, charging could be considered "punish"-ing a dev for using their APIs.
My own opinion? Issue 2 they will get worked out, but it won't matter because I don't think the EU will move at all on issue 1. I think they see data privacy as serving a twofold purpose. One, protecting their citizens from US surveillance. ie-National Security. And two, part of their long term strategy to decrease the influence of US tech firms in the EU. Both of which I think European policymakers and European common people feel are critical to Europe.
I agree from a business perspective, those headphones were all brand and a bad fit for apple from a quality perspective. Do we really need regulators deciding when businesses are wasting their money?
I'm a disappointed Pixel 10 owner living in Germany
Or really the headphones actively register and send data outside of the EU. There's been some pushback recently on this front (ie. recent MSFT case [1]) since it's a known fact in the field that the approved 2023 EU-US DPF is basically BS, as it doesn't really address the core issues for which US companies were deamed not-compatible with GDPR.
[1] https://www.senat.fr/compte-rendu-commissions/20250609/ce_co...
Google Search, YouTube, Chrome, Shopping, Maps, Ads, the Play Store, and Android.
It never ceases to amaze me in worst way possible how quite a few people here keep treating them as something more, over and over. Or maybe its just that PR campaign.
Don't take me wrong, they have fine devices for specific type of people and good business strategy overall but above applies hard.
A lot of people are investing in Apple, most likely you are indirectly as well, if not you then your pension. Not surprised some people would defend everything they do. Then you have the die-hard fans and I'm sure there's some PR peeps going around especially how it easy it is nowadays with AI.
Alternatively it might have something to do with the translation being performed in iOS, and the capability not being exposed to competitor audio devices, and therefore Apple needs assurance the EU won't consider it anticompetitive?
Or both.
EU has defined Apple (but not Google(!)) as a "digital gatekeeper" and thus Apple has to comply to pretty much any part of their system being replaced with a 3rd party alternative.
So if they bring this system in, something which is listening to people real time and using online AI models to translate things, EU might force them to let _any_ 3rd party AI replace it.
And when someone installs TotallyHonest Co. AI to replace it and there's a massive data leak where they just stored every conversation as-is in an open S3 bucket, who gets the PR flak on HN? Apple, EU or TotallyHonest? The headlines will have "Apple" in them to drive clicks and TotallyHonest is maybe mentioned in the 3rd paragraph, which nobody will read or remember.
The only winning move is not to play.
Could you explain what you mean? The following article lists Alphabet as a gatekeeper.
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en
> So if they bring this system in, something which is listening to people real time and using online AI models to translate things, EU might force them to let _any_ 3rd party AI replace it.
If you allow the third party to do that, yes.
> And when someone installs TotallyHonest Co. AI to replace it and there's a massive data leak where they just stored every conversation as-is in an open S3 bucket, who gets the PR flak on HN?
I see this argument often, as often as I hear about leaks. Do you have an instance where Apple was blamed for a leak from a third party? I never heard anybody blaming Apple for Tea app leaks for a recent example, and it is still available on App Store.
Also, an alternative translation app does not have to be provided by a totally random third party vendor. Companies that to me are just as trustworthy as Apple surely will provide alternatives too - Google, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft or Anthropic.
So I really don't see what's your point here. Don't install the alternatives if you don't trust them.
Even though quite literally every single piece of major western technology is assembled in Foxconn factories.
It's purely because dissing Apple brings clicks and people arguing on comment sections and social media posts.
--
And about 3rd party translation AI systems. Of course _I_ won't install suspicious ones, but how do you make sure Auntie Liz won't? If you provide an option to do so, grifters will get less tech literate folks to install any kind of crapware.
Apple chose Foxconn. It won't get to choose the third parties implementing alternative translation apps. That's the point.
I see that I wasn't specific, but I thought it's obvious given the context.
> And about 3rd party translation AI systems. Of course _I_ won't install suspicious ones, but how do you make sure Auntie Liz won't?
I think you are switching topics from allowing other vendors to use Apple-only APIs to "sideloading".
Educate her. (yes, that's not Apple's responsibility, and they don't even try. We need people to understand what applications can do when installed on a smartphone or a computer. It's a national education issue IMO). If she can't take care of herself anymore - parental controls.
I see the point in having some entity verify legitimacy of applications, but it does not need to be only Apple/Google, like with TLS.
Because unbeknownst to many, e.g., just because someone is in your home does not mean they do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in spaces that are common, i.e., not the bathroom, e.g., a house cleaner or maybe a contractor or even a guest talking while you are not in the room.
This generally only applies to the voice recording, not the video itself.
I have been a bit surprised that some enterprising attorneys with a hunger for getting rich have not jumped on this matter already. Because you, the owner may have consented to being recorded by an always-on listening device, but your family members or your guests will likely not have done so. Or, even if some slick corporate attorney got you to agree to take on responsibility for notifying everyone as is necessary in each jurisdiction, that makes you even, legally speaking, knowingly engaging in felonious activity.
Or even more likely, as others have suggested, it’s Apple being petty and withholding features from EU users to put pressure on the EU.
The EU has threatened massive fines for creating features not available to competitors. And the EU refuses to vet a feature officially in advance.
Under such conditions, how would you distinguish being petty from complying with the law?
The EU probably imagined the outcome would be: change your business practices entirely for the EU, and make all new features open to all, immediately, perpetually, everywhere.
But that's not the norm for the vast majority of companies, for a variety of sensible reasons. Given that it's actually hard to do that, witholding new features until you're told "yes this is ok" is a rational response to the law.
Waiting the way you describe only makes sense if they think the implementation probably follows the law, but they're not sure it will be accepted. We could make that argument for privacy rules, we can't in good faith make that argument for interoperability rules.
The law does not say you must make all features available in the EU. Generally speaking business regulations don't force companies to offer services. They instead regulate how the service can be offered if offered.
The hidden downside of regulation is a lot of stuff doesn't get built. It's just normally not so visible, but software is distributed worldwide so we can see the effect.
You misread me.
"it" in the phrase "they need to make it available to all headsets in the EU" was referring to features they release in the EU.
So yes you're interpreting the law right, and so am I.
> The hidden downside of regulation is a lot of stuff doesn't get built. It's just normally not so visible, but software is distributed worldwide so we can see the effect.
If the deciding factor in whether something gets built is whether they can lock it to another product, it's usually okay for that thing to not be built.
In this case, they obviously did build it. So now it's a matter of figuring out what the hold up is.
If it's because they don't want to, even though it would make them money and make people in the EU happy, then that's pettiness.
Now there's a difference between building a feature and building interoperability. You have to actually work at it. And if you rush to do so on every feature:
1. You may modify features you didn't need to
2. You open yourself up to other countries demanding specific software changes
The simplest thing is just to make one version for the world, and wait for an ok. Big downsides to either rushing to release as is or rushing to make a change you may not need to make.
I think that whether or not they built the thing does not matter.
The way Apple and others misuse their market position to get away with anything is ridiculous. At a certain size or influence you shouldn't be both a platform for other companies and products and a participant in that platform while giving yourself all sorts of advantages.
Airpods are decent but they have most of their market share due to the massive integration gap from competitors. So shit it's impossible for anyone to compete.
Do the relevant provider-agnostic Bluetooth audio standards (in USB they’d be class devices, not sure on Bluetooth terminology) have equivalent features that Apple is refusing to just implement? I think it’s reasonable to ask Apple to support interoperability standards once the industry settles on them, but it seems weird to incentivize them to create bespoke standards that they control in an effort to reduce their market power.
I’m fine with apple looking to exit the market and/or harm their product rather than comply.
A missing fringe feature won't drive fans of the eco system away.
It's not clear to me to what extent you disagreed with what I wrote. But, on this point I should point out that every time Apple holds back a feature citing the DMA there is much complaint in Europe.
So regardless of what you think it seems a lot of people do care. You appear to have a better understanding of the law: Apple can bring in a feature if all can use it or they can withhold the feature.
Voicemail greetings typically inform the caller the message will be recorded, and there'a often a beep which is an indicator of recording as well. If you don't consent to recording, you can hang up without leaving a message.
Or is it powered entirely by local models?
> Live Translation is integrated into Messages, FaceTime, and Phone to help users communicate across languages, translating text and audio on the fly.1 Live Translation is enabled by Apple-built models that run entirely on device, so users’ personal conversations stay personal.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-elevates-the-ip...
For anything remotely powerful enough, iOS will have to send voice to some server for processing and that’s a privacy shit show.
I recently explored building a real-time STT system for sales calls to support cold-calling efforts. However, the consensus from my research was that, even if audio is streamed live without storage, consent laws could still present significant hurdles.
Common sense says that a recording that only exists for a few seconds, and is utilized only by the person a speaker is intending to speak to, and is never permanently stored, should be fine. And we can assume Apple has made sure this is legal in its home state of California.
But EU law might not have sufficient legal clarity on this if it was written in a particularly open-ended way.
You have to specify usage however. Which is what most companies bark about because they want to store things for later use and unknown purpose. Which is frowned upon. You also need to protect personal data adequately which is deliberately vague. Storing it unencrypted for instance is not considered adequate. This also applies in transit.
Even in a two party state public spaces are fair game. The Constitution supersedes state law.
You’re probably thinking about warrantless recordings of conversations and the reasonable expectation of privacy requirement. This doesn’t apply here.
Also, the US Constitution does constrain private actors, all the time. It bans slavery for a very simple example.
The constitutional view of the 13th Amendment is that it withdrew from government the power to promulgate or enforce laws that allowed slavery to exist. If a slave escaped after the 13th Amendment passed, the government then lacked the power to assist the former slaveholder in capturing and returning him. Similarly, without the power to enforce property rights, there became effectively no property interest in a slave.
If I tried to draw up an indentured servitude contract, what federal or state laws would explicitly forbid enforcing it myself? If state laws, do all states have equivalent laws?
How do you self-enforce an indentured servitude contract? Or any contract, for that matter? Only a court can compel performance or restitution for a breach of contract.
It won't. Regulations permit sound recording, as long as it's not stored. Speech-to-text and hearing aids for disabled people are an example of permitted uses.
I hope you really do not want a future like this.
As part of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) evaluation [0], Apple was found to operate a market for headphones connected to its devices, while competing in the same market with own products and giving itself a competitive advantage by creating OS-features exclusive to them.
The EU found this is not a level playing field for competition and ordered that they have to make such OS features available for other accessory manufacturers as well.
I guess they are currently either trying to make a case for the EU on how it is technically impossible to provide the feature to others, prove that this is somehow not an OS-feature (and should be excluded) or delay any action to maximize the benefit of this competitive advantage in other markets.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are also beats headphones in the pipeline for which they want to use this feature as competitive USP...
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
"[..] The measures will grant device manufacturers and app developers improved access to iPhone features that interact with such devices (e.g. displaying notifications on smartwatches), faster data transfers (e.g. peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections, and near-field communication) and easier device set-up (e.g. pairing).
As a result, connected devices of all brands will work better on iPhones. Device manufacturers will have new opportunities to bring innovative products to the market, improving the user experience for consumers based in Europe. The measures ensure that this innovation takes place in full respect of users' privacy and security as well as the integrity of Apple's operating systems."As an example, when they were compelled to allow competing browser engines, they didn't open source Safari; they added a multiprocessing/JIT API to iOS (tailored and restricted by policy to browsers). Competitors (web browsers) got access to the OS features (multiprocessing/JIT) that they needed to compete with Apple's product (Safari), but they didn't get access to the product itself and still need to build their own.
In this case, competitors (device makers) might request access to the OS feature (background execution) that they need to compete with Apple's product (live translation on AirPods).
It should also be noted that such functionality only has to be provided if explicitly requested by a developer who is working on a competing product, so they don't have to develop it preemptively.
I'm not saying that this is completely fair or whatever, just that I don't think it's quite as extreme as people are making it out to be?
I think this situation also shows a strong divide between two visions of Apple end-game (and I think both exist within the company): exposing those APIs makes the Apple ecosystem better as a whole, with its satellite accessories/app developers; while keeping them private gives them an edge as a hardware selling company. Personally, I prefer when Apple embraces its gatekeeper status.
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/translation/transl... [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/speech [2]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/speec...
So if I'm Samsung, wouldn't I explicitly request every possible bit of functionality I could force Apple to provide, even if the "competing product" might very slow to market?
As a Mac user since 2007 and iPhone user since 2009, this behavior of Apple disgusts me. (Yes, I know - vote with your wallet. I switched from Apple Watch Ultra to Garmin Fenix and do have a Pixel with GrapheneOS.)
In my opinion Apple is the only one acting in the interest of the consumer. These efforts to open up Apple's platform are nothing more than attempts to weaken the security that Apple's customers enjoy by default. How we got here and whether Apple is truly "good" is irrelevant. If you care about your data not being used against you, Apple is your only option.
I doubt I am the only one who feels this level of discomfort with the way other technology companies treat their users (and those who aren't their users).
Perhaps the regulations treat is as if you’re “recording” the person you’re speaking with, without their consent?
For example, maybe Apple purposefully trained the model to not only optimizing working with AirPods, but to optimize not working with any other input devices? If Apple could be in trouble if it became known they did such specific training, could it also mean there is the potential for them to have legal issues due the potential for them to have done such?
(I think we can also make a similar argument when it comes to the hardware being made to optimally run one specific model and possible allegations it doesn't run other models as well.)
If the government doesn't crack down on this sort of behavior, a company could use it to try to meet the legal requirements technically while also still hurting competitors. But if the government does crack down on it, then a company could be caught up under an accusation of doing this even if they didn't (they just didn't care to optimize for competitors at all, but never negatively optimized for them either).
If I were Apple, I'd say you got what you want EU, it works on ALL earphones in EU. But it will be absolutely terribly shitty because we will use the same model trained for our AirPods on your random headphones.
You're using a third party BLE airtag and clicking on UWB? Enjoy tracking this approximate noisy location that we're basing off of some noise pattern we didn't lock on.
Feature provided, just not well. Goes against Apple's ethos of trying to make things polished but don't let some bureaucrats weaponize that against you.
The issue arises when Apple leverages their position as gatekeeper to anticompetitively preference their own headphones in the iPhone/iOS ecosystem. Can't do that.
> If I were Apple, I'd say you got what you want EU, it works on ALL earphones in EU. But it will be absolutely terribly shitty because we will use the same model trained for our AirPods on your random headphones.
The problem for Apple is that they have no secret sauce here: absent any ratfuckery, it would probably work just as well with competing headsets, if not better (particularly since many of Apple's competitors' headsets have better sound quality, better microphone quality, and better noise cancellation). That's probably why they aren't taking your suggestion and are instead choosing anticompetitive behavior.
Yeah, I'd believe it. There is a good chance that is very much the case here.
For reference, we are seeing it more and more - sensor design changes to improve loss curve performance - there’s even a term being bandied about : “AI-friendly sensor design”. This does have a nasty side effect of basically breaking abstraction - but that’s the price you pay for using the bitter lesson and letting the model come up with features instead of doing it yourself. (Basically - the sensor->computer abstraction eats details the RL could use to infer stuff)
audio goes into mic => STT engine => translation model => TTS engine => audio comes out of speaker
a change in hardware would be a change in the "audio goes into mic" component of the model, which is not the critical part of the model.
All the parts of the above architecture already exist: we already have mics, STT, translation models, TTS, and speakers, and they all worked on other systems before apple even announced this, much less came up with a redesign. Most likely the redesign is aesthetic or just has slightly better sound transmission or reception – none of those were necessary for the functioning of the above architecture in other, non-apple systems.
I am, of course, assuming apple's architecture is a rough approximation of above. An alternative theoretical architecture might resemble the one below, but I have seen no evidence apple is doing this.
audio goes into mic => direct audio-to-audio translation model => audio comes out of speaker
If we were using Whisper in that pipeline, we could for example generate speaker embeddings for each segment whisper generates, then group by matching the speaker embeddings - and in reality, this doesn't really work all that well.
But we are still left with the question of _WHO_ to feed to the translation model - so, ideally, the person facing us or talking at us - so we'd have to classify the 3 people all talking to each other given their angle in relation to the listener's head, etc.. This is what the diarization model would have to do - and the more sophisticated diarization models certainly could use the precise angle input can only be computed if you have super-close timings.
So Apple is throwing a huge tantrum and withholding features from the EU to act like this is a much bigger deal than it is. This gives Apple a lot more bargaining room after the EU bitch slapped them.
Apple likely already has an API they could enable and be done with this. They won't do that. Apple needs exclusivity with new feature releases because they don't do things all that well anymore(Siri, maps, etc, nobody uses those because there are better alts available on ios).
But yeah Apple is just starting way to the extreme so they have more room to bargain. Hopefully the EU sees through this, again, and doesn't budge.
>Apple needs exclusivity with new feature releases because they don't do things all that well anymore(Siri, maps, etc, nobody uses those because there are better alts available on ios).
Siri was okay for a very brief window after release and then dreadful ever since and Apple Maps was never good, but has gotten better. Etc maybe more valid idk
I dislike Apple's malicious compliance with the EU too, but it seems unrelated here, at least without any proof.
This isn’t the first time that Apple has been withholding features from the EU without ever providing a clear and understandable explanation, so there isn’t much basis for giving them the benefit of the doubt.
As this is HackerNews, you should expect to see at least a couple commenters who believe they should have control over devices they own, including interoperability without artificial, anticompetitive limitations.
Not really. They are complying by not offering features that would be considered anti-competitive. It’s not untoward, it’s just following their interpretation of the law. We obviously don’t know the discussions between Apple and the EC, but in public it’s American nerds who are complaining that the EU is bad.
It is my understanding that this is what apple has chosen to do in areas where this iOS feature is available. Is that not the case?
The audio is captured by the outward facing microphones used for active noise cancellations. That’s why it only works for AirPods Pro 2, 3 and AirPods 4 with ANC. That wouldn’t just work with any headphones.
Even the AirPods Pro 2 will need a firmware update. They won’t work with just any old headphones and seeing that even the AirPods Pro 2 need a firmware update tells me that it is something they are doing with their H2 chip in their headphones in concert with the iPhone.
That it only works with AirPods is just Apple discriminating in favour of their own product which is exactly what the EU was going after.
But their $60 ANC headphones with cheap audio processing hardware in the headphones aren’t going to be sufficient.
They may even be able to use the exposed models on the phone.
The equivalent feature on Android tells me it would. I mean it already does technically.
Are we supposed to treat Apple being late to the party as usual as some kind of exceptional thing only them could do?
https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/7573100?hl...
Which are the same price as Apple’s AirPods with ANC.
So Google also didn’t try to support the feature with generic earbuds.
But I mean, you are free to buy overpriced Apple headphones which sounds worse than Sony, only properly works paired with an Apple phone or laptop and whose killer feature was available on their competitors buds years ago if that rocks your boat.
The noise cancellation are neck and neck but the AirPods had much less of that “pressure” sensation when using it. AirPods transparency is just plain better. Comfort for long use sessions is better on the Sony’s. Mic is better on the AirPods.
And those Sony ones aren’t cheap.
The first review I found comparing them..
https://wasteofserver.com/sony-wf-1000xm4-vs-apple/
Why would I want to by a none Apple laptop with horrible battery life, loud, and that produces enough heat to ensure that I don’t have offspring if I actually put it on my lap?
This is no different than Google not supporting just any old headphones.
Then the argument came that Apple’s AirPods are “overpriced” even though the cheapest AirPods that support it - AirPods 4 with ANC are in the same price range as Google’s and cheaper than the worse sounding and more expensive Sony Earbuds.
The whole argument seems kind of silly. Just buy the platform you want that has the features you want. If the European thinks Apple is overpriced then it's no harm that they aren't bringing features to Europe. He wasn't going to buy them and now is going to not buy them even harder.
The rest, which is to say that everything Apple sells beside laptops is subpar, their strategy regarding European regulations deprive them of any credibility when they pretend to care about consumers and their prices conversion in Europe is daylight robbery, is just my opinion and accessory to the discussion. I just couldn’t help myself.
You aren’t going to save any money by getting a pair of $50 ANC headphones and hoping they work with the system - the Android variant doesn’t.
Absolutely not. It assumed the AirPods Pro 2 unique processing was required which it clearly isn’t.
Nobody ever talked about saving money.
The whole discussion is about the EU mandating Apple play fair which would mean letting competitors access their phone processing exactly like Google is already doing.
You didn’t say this?
> But I mean, you are free to buy overpriced Apple headphones
> which sounds worse than Sony,
And the Sony headphones sound worse and are more expensive.
> only properly works paired with an Apple phone or laptop
Which also isn’t true.
Sony headphones sounds noticeably better than AirPods Pro 2 by the way and their EQ is better. AirPods have great noise cancellation but their sound quality is not that great.
> > only properly works paired with an Apple phone or laptop
> Which also isn’t true.
Care to explain to me how I set what presses do on AirPods without an Apple product. How do I disable noise cancellation and pass through? Where do I setup the level of noise cancellation?
Yes, exactly.
And the headphones are “overpriced” even though they are the same price as comparable devices that have worse ANC?
And a simple Google search tells you how to pair AirPods to none Apple devices
https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/airpods/dev499c9718b/w...
Maybe, maybe not. Assuming Apple's motivation isn't pure self-dealing, it's very consistent with Apple's behavior to forbid or impede doing things that are absolutely possible but sometimes result in a sub-par experience.
I mean they absolutely are especially as EU regulators categorically refuse to review anything in advance just in-case their get a budget shortfalls and need to go looking for fines.
What else is it going to do ? Translating Californian to New York English ? Help with ordering from Taipei-Palace ?
(I live in NYC where the mix of languages is thick, but I rarely have to reach even for my Spanish, because English is still commonly understood everywhere, at least to some degree.)
That kindly old man making noodles behind the counter on that restaurant you frequent off Canal St? The one that always has a stoic face and never says a word? He doesn’t speak any English, but try chatting with him in Mandarin and he’ll talk your ear off with his life story.
If the facts are clear please show them. Show the fact that the EU made the decision to not have this feature instead of apple.
It is thanks to EU regulations, which are literal facts in front of us. That’s why the feature isn’t shipped in the EU, because of EU’s own choices. At this point it’s clear you’d rather ignore that, so no reason to keep engaging. One last time: this is on the EU, not Apple.
No, its on Apple, for being anti-competitive.
You state that I am ignoring the facts, and you counter with an tautology?
Sorry but thats just fighting with dirty arguments.
You can proof me wrong very easily: Look up the Regulations and check where they disallows such a product on the market.
If it's written there then I am wrong and I will take the loss.
This feature happens on the phone, not the AirPods. There is no reason at all why this shouldn't be available in the EU, except the consumer friendly need to provide the API for the feature to other device manufacturers.
It’s alike Chinese cars that are being made and used everywhere, but cannot be imported to US because of huge tariffs that was put by the government. So it’s the government that’s blocking the citizens from the access to the product.
Actually this is the second time I'm frustrated by this, I was surprised to discover that iPhone Mirroring is also blocked. This is strike 2 for me, one more and I won't buy another Apple product.
1) the EU has a lot of stupid regulations but the DMA is not one of them
I'm sure Apple would say that the experience would not be the same with other (lesser) headphones, and that damages the user experience, etc. Some people would believe that's the reason, but the EU won't and neither do I.
Or they just become more inefficient… either way, it’s going to be fun to see the results.
$99/yr is clearly a fair and reasonable compensation to license all Disney IP for any purpose because Disney has an eleventy bajillion percent margin on ticket sales.
It's not technology that's being blocked here, it's uncompetitive commercialisation that is (at least in the EU)
But honestly, I do not believe GDPR is the reason here. Apple is also very privacy focused.
GDPR does grant it rights to EU citizens everywhere in the world but also other nation citizens in EU. I personally like GDPR a lot but I understand that people are complaining about this part
I’m an Apple user since mac OS8 and I’m fully immersed in the apple ecosystem system. But my next phone will be an android.
I’m sorry, but it turns out regulation with punitively high fines attached to it creates massive regulatory risk for public companies that have a duty to shareholders to take them extremely seriously, and document everything along the way. Otherwise they don’t just get in trouble with regulators, but end up in endless litigation with shareholders.
How you can believe creating an extremely nuanced set of holes, that if stepped in, results in billions of fines won’t delay new launches (and innovation ultimately) in the EU is just astonishing to me. The fun part is all the traps that open due to the combination of different regs interacting and new interpretations due to actual court cases.
Please don’t turn this into another “malicious compliance evil-corporate conspiracy” meme like GDPR is on this site. It doesn’t cultivate intellectual curiosity, just flame wars, and is making me want to not hang out here anymore.
Agreed. No matter which side of the issue one is on, the fact you and everyone else who explains the incentive structure is getting downvoted to hell and receiving eloquent responses like "Bull fucking shit dude" is really pathetic.
Is HN really just another emotionalist monoculture echo chamber now? We're downvoting everything we disagree with whether it's true or not? Count me out.
Two things can be true: big fines risk slow launches, and companies also use that friction to shape narratives and sequence rollouts.
> regulation with punitively high fines attached to it creates massive regulatory risk for public companies that have a duty to shareholders to take them extremely seriously
There were multiple cases where this didn't stop Apple from keeping anti-steering rules long enough to get a €1.8B fine (music streaming), eating €50M in Dutch penalties over dating-app payments, delaying Apple Intelligence/Phone Mirroring in the EU citing the DMA, and then getting fined again under the DMA for App Store steering.
There are strict rules in China as well. Apple just plays a different game there. In China it's rapid, quiet compliance with content/data controls. In the EU, the DMA forces structural changes that touch Apple's model, you see legal fights, staged rollouts, and public messaging (e.g., delaying Apple Intelligence/Phone Mirroring).
If Apple were doing that, it would be telling us why it wasn't supporting this feature in the EU, putting anti-DMA ads out, open letters, etc. But it's not. It's clearly doing the opposite and trying to stay out of the narrative.
And all of the fines you point to are exactly why Apple is now exceedingly cautious. The fines are working. They've changed Apple's behavior because they're an established proven risk now.
You contrast China with the EU and claim Apple is playing a different game, but it's not. The types of regulations are what's different. Chinese regulations have mainly been about requiring Apple to block certain features or content, which is easy, and Apple complies. The EU is demanding Apple build a lot of extra stuff to enable third-party interop or else not release a feature at all... and Apple is complying by not releasing features because the interop is hard and takes much longer and delays features for the rest of the world and might not be worth the effort at all.
Apple itself publicly tied EU delays to the DMA ("regulatory uncertainties") when it postponed Apple Intelligence/Phone Mirroring/SharePlay in the EU.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/a...
> And all of the fines you point to are exactly why Apple is now exceedingly cautious. The fines are working. They've changed Apple's behavior because they're an established proven risk now.
After the €1.8B music-streaming fine, the Commission still found Apple in breach of DMA anti-steering in 2025 (additional penalties), and Dutch courts upheld ACM's earlier finding in the dating-apps case. That looks like an ongoing contest, not just "we complied and moved on.". So no, not really.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
> Chinese regulations have mainly been about requiring Apple to block certain features or content, which is easy, and Apple complies.
Apple doesn't only "block stuff" in China. It made major engineering/process changes (moved Chinese iCloud keys to a state-affiliated host) and shipped region-specific feature behaviour quickly (AirDrop "Everyone for 10 minutes").
https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-moves-to-st...
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/09/apple-limits-airdrop-every...
They don’t care about Apple’s global business, only Apple inside of China.
This is the company that is trying to subvert the DMA with Core technology fees that they're not entitled to, and notarization which allows them to retain the gatekeeping power that they're not entitled to. That's the same company that attempted to maliciously comply with a US court order which forced them to allow developers to provide external payment options by instituting a new imaginary 27% fee on external payments, making alternative non-viable.
This is the same company whose internal memos filed in court document their malicious compliance strategies.
> In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” From Mr. Onak’s perspective, of the “execs” on the project, Mr. Schiller was at the top. One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.”
> [...] The designers’ discussions contextualize their use of the word “scary” to indicate its ordinary meaning and, most applicable here, indicate the goal of deterring users as much as possible from completing a linked-out transaction. Apple repeatedly acted to maintain its revenues and stifle competition. This was no exception. His attempts to reframe the obvious meaning of these communications do not persuade. All of this was hidden from the Court and not revealed in the May 2024 evidentiary hearing.
Apple are grand masters of malicious compliance. Attempting to portray this fact as a "meme conspiracy" is intellectually dishonest bordering on gaslighting, and weaponizing your paper thin veil of "intellectual curiosity" to attack this criticism makes me not want to participate. But I will continue, precisely because of people like you who try to use an aura of intellectually superior and rational "intellectual curiosity" to push false narratives.
> In its notice of compliance and at the May 2024 hearing, Apple claimed that restrictions on link placement protect against “security risks.” Again, Apple attempted to mislead. Mr. Schiller asserted that having an external link appear on the same page as IAP can increase the risk of a user’s exposure to fraudulent conduct. [...] Given the lack of any document identifying this alleged concern, the Court finds these justifications pretextual; said differently, the proffered rationales are nothing more than after-the-fact litigation posturing or outright misrepresentations to the Court.
> At the end of the day, Apple’s internal documents reflect the underlying motivation to stifle competition by cabining developers’ ability to attract users to alternate payment methods: “How much can we limit what devs do with the text and links?
> In other words, to stifle competition, Apple was modeling the tipping point where external links would cease to be advantageous for developers due to friction in the purchase flow
> Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover- up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
Which speed limits? is 60kph too much?
This is one of the most asinine takes and comparisons I've seen.
And technology is most certainly not harmless, as I'm sure every reader of this website knows.
You've not given the person being recorded any way to exercise their legal rights around collecting, inspecting and deleting their data.
GDPR is aimed at companies building user databases, not allowing them to completely ignore security, accuracy, user complaints, and sell anything to anybody while lying about it. It doesn't limit individual people's personal use of data.
The rest is correct: the restrictions are aimed at organisations, not individuals.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj/eng#art_4.tit_...
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-cctv-usi...
"If your CCTV system captures images of people outside the boundary of your private domestic property – for example, from neighbours’ homes or gardens, shared spaces, or from public areas – then the GDPR and the DPA will apply to you. You will need to ensure your use of CCTV complies with these laws. If you do not comply with your data protection obligations you may be subject to appropriate regulatory action by the ICO, as well as potential legal action by affected individuals."
You, as an individual, have data protection obligations, if your ring doorbell captures audio/video about someone outside your property boundaries. The apple translation service seems analogous.
This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj/eng#rct_18
GDPR is aimed at protecting _individual's_ personal information, irrespective of what or who is collecting or processing it.
Meta glasses also: https://www.meta.com/help/ai-glasses/955732293123641
If there were real issues with GDPR or the AI Act Apple would have nothing to lose and everything to gain by mentioning at least the generalities of _why_. But they did no such thing so we can only assume it is not any of those things which are the real issues.
Really? You can't imagine any reasons Apple wouldn't want to have a public PR battle about its disagreements with its primary regulator in the market? Have you ever worked with the government?
But for this translation feature they have not even mentioned any regulatory issues, so we should from conclude, from previous and current behaviour, that Apple is delaying for something else. Probably engineering or political reasons.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/12/apple-delays-iphone-air...
Apple's main strength is their flawless ecosystem, everything made by apple works perfectly with everything else made by apple.
My airpods switch seamlessly between my apple devices, my watch unlocks all my stuff, my phone can be used as a camera and mic for my macbook, all of my devices besides my earbuds can be used to pay for things. All of it works completely seamlessly, no annoying popups, no dialog boxes, no asking for permission ten million times, no random disconnects. Literally no friction at all, once a new device is set up it's done. This frictionless-ness needs Apple's proprietary modifications to standards to function and it needs Apple's devices to be individually secure and all of these seamless connections need to also be secure.
If users want that then they buy apple.
If users want the spam ridden garbage hole that is Google's Play Store, or the terrible jamming of Android into poor quality cheap devices or the rubbish quality of most consumer tech in general then they can buy whatever they want but I don't want $10 aliexpress smartwatches to be able to seamlessly connect to my phone. I don't want random bluetooth earbuds from the petrol station to be able to access an API that lets them send transcripts of my calls anywhere they like and I definitely don't want a low barrier to entry for devices that can airdrop me stuff or paste to my macbook if I'm out and about.
Mybe Apple should just lock it's devices down so that they only work with other Apple devices full stop. Then there wouldn't be a market for compatible devices to compete in. I'd be happy because I have never once bought a non-apple device that I care about connecting to my phone. I'd have to buy a new monitor but that's ok.
All consumer tech right now is literally rebadges or mild modificatioins of stuff from AliExpress and I don't want that in my nice clean ecosystem. If these competitors want to actually compete then how about they make something that's actually better in some way instead of just hamfistedly copying whatever Apple comes up with? Live translation exists on google devices, if you want non-apple accessories and live translation then just buy a pixel and pixel buds? Nobody forces anyone to buy into apple's ecosystem.
I have switched between ecosystems multiple times and every single time I ended up back with Apple since I bought my first iPhone 5 back when they were new. The issues that android and windows devices have far outweigh the cost of Apple lockin. Especially for someone who just wants their devices to work as what they are and doesn't care about tinkering with them.
> I don't want $10 aliexpress smartwatches to be able to seamlessly connect to my phone
Why? What is an objective reason for something like that?
You are the gatekeeper of your devices. You choose which accessories to pair. If you only want Apple-made devices to connect to your phone, fine. You do that. No one is suggesting or even implying that customers should be forced to use non-Apple devices.
The main point is to give the customers a choice. And let them decide what they want.
> What I don't want is for the protocols that allow for apple's seamlesness to be opened to cheap trash.
Why not? Is there any objective reason for that?
> If Apple is forced to make it open to manufacturers of cheap trash and support it for manfacturers of cheap trash
What are you even talking about? No one is suggesting that Apple should be supporting other manufacturers' products in a sense that it should be Apple's responsibility to make sure that they work.
This discussion is about interoperability. The only ask is to do things in a standardized way. So that other manufacturers can develop interoperable products, if they so like.
You either allow "cheap trash" that no one forces you to buy, or you exclude everyone. Here's Pebble on how they can't make their otherwise capable watch compatible with Apple products for absolutely arbitrary decisions on Apple's part: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
> Customers already have a choice, e-waste slop garbage or apple products.
Ah yes. As we all know, there are exactly two categories of products: Apple's flawless products and cheap trash. Nothing in between.
Only the interfaces and protocols. This is not the interesting or expensive part, unlike the implementation. Apple can still have the best implementation of the protocol, and a lot of people will believe that this is the case.
> For what?
So that people are not locked into the ecosystem when they buy the device. The price for the phone is what they pay, not what they will be forced to pay later, for example by only being able to choose airpods or apple watch for full experience later. For example.
> I don't want random bluetooth earbuds from the petrol station to be able to access an API that lets them send transcripts of my calls anywhere they like
First, don't buy them, you don't have to. Second, technically, the API exposed by the device will first need to allow them to connect somewhere online and send any data. That's a separate issue. Not to mention that, hypothetically, if bluetooth airbuds were able to send data somewhere by themselves, a malicious airbud manufacturer could still use the protocols by reverse engineering them. Not necessarily the case with legit manufacturers. Such lockin only stops legitimate, non-malicious actors.
> and I definitely don't want a low barrier to entry for devices that can airdrop me stuff or paste to my macbook if I'm out and about.
Allowing everyone and anyone to airdrop you stuff is a bad idea anyway. The protocol was reverse engineered too.
> I'd be happy because I have never once bought a non-apple device that I care about connecting to my phone. I'd have to buy a new monitor but that's ok.
And a lot of other Apple users wouldn't be happy.
> All consumer tech right now is literally rebadges or mild modificatioins of stuff from AliExpress and I don't want that in my nice clean ecosystem.
A lot is not. Again, just don't buy it, you have to choose to let such devices to connect to your device.
> If these competitors want to actually compete then how about they make something that's actually better in some way instead of just hamfistedly copying whatever Apple comes up with?
A lot of the time they legitimately want to, but Apple locks them out of certain features. For example, AFAIK, Garmin watches (legitimate company! with an original take on a smartwatch, definitely not copying Apple) are locked from accessing certain iOS features Apple Watch can access.
In 2017, Apple secretly throttled the performance of older iPhones to prevent shutdowns, without informing users.
In the butterfly keyboard years (2015-2019) Apple denied that their tech was crap and blamed users.
The 30% fee in the app store is outrageous.
The right-to-repair restrictions are clearly anti-consumer. Preventing users from using 3rd party parts for repairs, voiding warranties. $500 display repairs.
Agressive planned obsolescence. Non-upgradable components. Software updates that slow older devices down.
Sideloading restrictions, reducing user choice and security options.
Butterfly keyboard isn't great but it works better without being crammed full of cheeto dust.
Play store has no barrier to entry and it's a slop filled garbage shithole. There's garbage slop on Apple's Appstore too but nowhere near as much.
The flipside to the 3rd party parts that nobody talks about is that if there was a sudden flood of apple devices repaired poorly with sheapo shit parts then buying used apple devices would be a terrible experience. I bought a lot of my Apple stuff 2nd hand and it all works great. Nobody said that anything had to be cheap, you want cheap go buy something else. Price is what you pay but value is what you get.
The planned obsolescence is not even a thing, they have by far the best record for supporting their old devices. I have an '09 Macbook Pro that is able to run El Capitan and the last security update for that was 2018. Iphone 6s is STILL receiving security updates. If you want to easily upgrade your components then don't buy apple devices, if you don't want to maintain winblows but still want serious applications to be able to run natively then buy apple. Older devices slow down because literally nobody cares about writing software that's lightweight and only uses actually necessary system resources.
Again with the Appstore and the 'user choice' you have choices, dont buy Apple products if you want the freedom to bloat your stuff with crap software. There's a massive market of winblows and android devices with all the pointless unsupported-open-source-with-the-last-update-to-the-project-made-in-1234BCE software your heart desires out there for your slop and e-waste buying pleasure. What security do you gain from installing random shit beyond the security that Apple builds in by default?
ALL tech currently sucks massive donkey cock but at least if you buy an iphone then you know that it'll reliably perform the duties of a small pocket based social media based computer/car audio brain until such a time as you choose to replace it. If you buy a macbook then you know that it'll do the job of portable computing for you as long as your needs don't esceed what 99% of people actually use a computer for besides playing videogames (just get a console for those, seriously how the fuck is a weird RGB chair in an RGB room better than a couch with your cat/dog/friends/family) for over a decade of your life. At least when you buy Apple products you know that you're paying out your ass for something that will 100% deliver on all the promises it makes.
There's no credible excuse to justify Apple's planned obsolescence of only a couple generation older products, except to increase the sales of newer models.
Also it's not like this company doesn't make big mistakes either. Remember the GSM iPhone 4 Antenna fiasco?
On a serious note, why would apple-apple integration stop working just because apple stops blocking competition?
After all apple hardware isn't even the most expensive. There are pricier phones and laptops being sold daily due to different features. So your race to the bottom point is moot.
If anything, competition could fix apple's sloppiness which it manages to leverage over the gullible due to artificial anti-competitive measures.
If Apple was so good, it wouldn't need to abuse their customers intellect.
I get the Apple is trying to spread propaganda that anti-competitive laws are bad for consumers, but in this case, consumers will just buy from another brand and it's a simple net loss for Apple.
They are simply weighting potential fines / loss of revenues due to being forced to share technology with competition against monetary losses due to fewer sales. So far fewer sales win.
These are features that apple are dedicating a huge amount of resources to. Tim Cook frequently talks up the importance of artificial intelligence as the future. Apple Intelligence is a tentpole feature of new iPhones, it has heavily influenced their advertising, and takes prime position in their marketing materials.
Withholding these features, even for just 6 months, is harmful to Apple. Especially when Apple appear weaker in the category, and competitors are frequently releasing AI products.
However here you'll read a byzantine concoction on how this is acshually a 4D anticompetitive chess move.
I want to switch to Android, but I have all the following problems:
1. iMessage, unlike whatsapp etc, does not have an android app, and some of my family uses iMessage, so I would be kicked from various group chats
2. My grandma only knows how to use facetime, so I can't talk to her unless I have an iPhone
3. My apple books I purchased can't be read on android
4. Lose access to all my apps (android shares this one)
5. I have a friend who uses airdrop to share maps and files when we go hiking without signal, and apple refuses to open up the airdrop protocol so that I can receive those from android, or an airdrop app on android
6. ... I don't have a macbook, but if I did the sreen sharing, copy+paste sharing, and iMessage-on-macos would all not work with android.
It's obvious that apple has locked in a ton of stuff. Like, all other messages and file-sharing protocols except iMessage and airdrop work on android+iOS. Books I buy from google or amazon work on iOS or android.
Apple is unique here.
1. Fortnite doesn't have an iPhone app, so if I switch to iOS I can't play with my friends
2. My friends only play Fortnite, so I can't play with them unless I play Fortnite.
3. My skins can't be used on Roblox.
4. I lose access to all my custom worlds
5. Other game engines don't work for building Fortnite custom worlds, I have to use Unreal.
It feels like a certain amount of lock-in is expected just from network effects of products, no?
I think there are classes of product that have an outsized amount of power and should be subject to more strict judgement on this however.
ISPs, payment processors, web browsers, general purpose operating systems, etc... all of these should not discriminate and give partners an unfair leg up.
Chrome should not block bing.com from loading, and should publish everything needed for anyone to write a webpage Chrome can render. Windows should not block iTunes from running, and should publish specs on how to write software for win32 APIs. iOS should publish airdrop specs to allow alternative implementations.
The rest of my complaints amount more to norms for certain things. It has become the norm that someone who sells digital books, music, or movies allows people to access them on the platforms they're on (spotify works on iOS and android, ditto for youtube music, etc etc). Apple is the only company I know of that abuses an OS+Media monopoly for basically all media, like Amazon has the Kindle, but they still let you read books on normal Android too. Apple is violating the norm in a way that feels intended to create an anti-competitive moat.
Similarly, every other messaging app is cross-platform, and iMessage not being cross platform, banning users who use it on android (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156308), and refusing to publish their own android app, that also feels like it violates the norms of messaging apps in a way that is either gross incompetence, or anti-competitive.
I think Fortnite doesn't qualify as an "operating system" because it can't gatekeep how someone interacts with competitors. If, in some weird future, Epic started selling "Fortnight Decks" (like the steam deck), included the "Deck Apps" app store, and it became a general way of computing for some appreciable fraction of kids, then yes, I think that hypothetical "Deck Apps" store and the device could have such lock-in and I'd have the same complaints.
I also think if fortnight became the default way the next generation communicates (akin to iMessage), it would indeed be wildly anti-competitive if they partnered with Google, and made it so the chat app was only available on ChromeOS.
However, as it is now, Fortnite isn't violating norms, nor is it going out of its way to gatekeep access to the community, nor is it anyone's gateway to general computing, so it doesn't feel comparable to iMessage, nor to the app store.
Also, what do you mean by "coy" there? I don't understand the meaning in that context.
Apple might be doing the same thing, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it, since their ecosystem is a closed gate.
Will those users buy OTHER headphones than Apple then, or still buy Airpods...?
From my observation the "properly locked-in" Apple user buys Airpods and mostly replaces them with newer Airpods when needed, because of Apple's artificial advantage in ecosystem interoperability (the exact reason of the dispute with the EU)
I also think there is little for them to litigate at this point, they were exchanging extensively for more than a year on how to reach compliance, then the decision [0] was made.
There are also separate procedures for the specification of compliance and investigating (non)compliance. Apple might continue to have a hard time litigating on non-compliance if they co-worked with the EU on the exact expectation of compliance beforehand.
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
Apple does this very clever, it works, but it has so many annoyances and bugs. By making 3th party products “annoying” to use, Apple nudges people to just buy Apple products/the ecosystem…
Every day. But I never ran into what you suggest. My iPad is not more annoying than my Dell laptop when it comes to Bluetooth (and both are light years away from my Linux box).
I had to do some hunting to figure out how a thread about AirPods descended into arguments about life expectancy and pensions. This is where it began. Please take care to avoid starting flamewars like this in future. We all have to consider the consequences of what we post, and it's against the guidelines to post inflammatory rhetoric for precisely this reason.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Source: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-are-generally-richer...
Having a big house and more money doesn't mean you have a better life; this seems to be the main point of the article you linked, but your comment seems to imply that you missed that point (though I could be misreading). Case in point, this quote from the blog:
> I could go on, but the pattern is pretty clear. The U.S. in general is less healthy and less safe than Europe.
No, I didn't miss the point; there's excellent data in that article for people who think the US is a great place to live, and people who think Europe is a great place to live. That's the beauty of the article, and the crux of my point: both of those groups can be correct – there's no single "this is the greatest place to live for all human beings, periodt" out there. The article concludes:
> But as one final thought, I’d like to offer the hypothesis that life is just about equally as good in all developed countries. There’s personal preference, of course — if you want a big house and a lawn, you might prefer America or Canada, whereas if you want national health insurance and lower crime rates, you might prefer Japan or France. But in terms of where the average person would want to live given the choice, I think all these rich countries are in the same ballpark.
https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/serie/001745304
https://www.kidsdata.org/topic/294/infant-mortality/table#fm...
Anyway, my point is those numbers are comparable when there are countries like Mexico, Brazil and India out there with an infant mortality rate of 11, 12.5 and 25 deaths per thousand, respectively.
(For the record I don't think the US is a better place to live than the EU, I just don't think it's worse either.)
Come on, are you going to make my argument so easy? Twice of two drops of nothing is four drops of nothing. You're nitpicking numbers that frankly don't make a difference because they're too close to matter. But don't argue with me, argue with the author of the article where you can see all of the data and comparisons for yourself.
The US infant mortality rate is shameful. Not as shameful as its poverty and homelessness rates but still shameful anyway.
I'm just not interested in nitpicking superfluous numbers with you. You've got the data in front of you showing that outcomes are, by and large, the same across the US and Europe, but you've decided to plant some jingoistic flag on a molehill of miniscule differences when there are countries in your own union with equally "shameful" results.
Please don't waste my time further by harping on these minute differences, I won't respond.
It doesn’t. A significant share of the EU budget actually goes toward helping the poorest members in catching up.
> You've got the data in front of you showing that outcomes are, by and large, the same across the US and Europe
Sorry but the data shows the reverse of that. I’m not wasting your time. You are in denial.
The US has high consumption but garbage metrics of approximately everything else. The GINI coefficient is extremely high. The infant mortality rate is poor. Life expectancy is bad for an OCDE country. Homelessness is so high you could believe it’s a developing country. Imprisonment rate, awful, literacy rate, very poor for a developed nation, social mobility, very low, the list goes on and on.
The USA is paradoxical in that it’s the only rich democracy which actually doesn’t take care of its population.
I’m glade you have the privilege of being rich there and I know you have been indoctrinated from birth into believe the US is exceptional, still, the numbers don’t actually look that good when you look at them.
This and social benefits are becoming unaffordable as the economy falls behind.
This is nonsense. The stock market had been propped up by FAANG. But with AI we have a few trillion dollars of value being created by new entrants (e.g. OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic) and legacy companies newly stepping on FAANG (e.g. Oracle, Perplexity).
It may all be a fever dream. But like the dark fiber of the 90s, it should—worst case—leave behind a lot of energy and datacentre infrastructure. (If Washington would get out of the way.)
Yeah OK, cool I guess
Right now using the valuation technique that tge value of a company is the net present value of all future returns * some multiple, we don’t know if any of them will ever be valuable.
This metric has nothing to do with whether a company is public or private.
Nobody ever knows what a company is worth other than the people buying and selling it in an M&A transaction at that precise moment. Public markets just have more transactions than private markets—the mechanism of price discovery is similar, if not the same.
> if all of the private companies “worth billions” went under, only VCs would be harmed
I’d be shocked if it didn’t take out the banking system.
You’re describing the annihilation of trillions of dollars of pension, endowment and retirement wealth; to say nothing of the effects on municipal, state and federal payroll finances; to say nothing of the asset-backed loans tied to these assets and purchases they make from public companies and their employees’ spending.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/11/private-equity-wants-a-large...
The article claims pensions, on the other hand, as one of the leading investors in private equity.
The term retirement plan is radically different from pensions.
By way of example, your local teachers union pension is probably massively invested to private equity. Your tech worker 401k is not.
but how would these airpods really be able to know you're in the EU? this should be easily hackable
It’s enormously difficult to ship any interesting feature that integrates hardware and software. The EU wants Apple to happily accept a burden that makes it harder to produce the products that made it popular in the first place.
I’m disappointed the EU won’t be getting these features (at least not quickly) but I’m hoping the citizenry realizes who’s to blame here
I recommend you to read the ruling [0] and form your own opinion.
> The EU wants Apple to happily accept a burden that makes it harder to produce the products that made it popular in the first place.
No, the EU mandates that Apple cannot implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering in a different market, because this is not fair competition. They are not required to foster new HW ecosystems for each feature, they just have to provide access to such OS features under equal conditions:
"By mandating an equally effective interoperability solution, the legislator acknowledged that the implementation of interoperability does not always need to (and potentially cannot always) be the same for the gatekeeper and third parties, but interoperability must be granted to the same feature under equal conditions."
Granted, Apple generally doesn't do that last part unless forced. I think some kind of timeline on the DMA requirements would be more reasonable. e.g. you have two years to make a feature publicly accessible before fines start accruing.
For a hobbyist? Sure! For a company with half the smartphone market and a trillion dollar market cap? EU doesn't mandate that they define a new standard and support it indefinitely.
Apple is not required to develop or maintain any feature against their will. The DMA is not written like that, it is much more objective and industry-agnostic.
The EU demands that features implemented in the OS to be used by Apple accessories must be made equally available to competing accessory vendors.
Certifying devices to make sure they're safe for users, like "this cable is certified as compatible, it won't set your iphone on fire", seems fine.
Requiring your app to be "certified by apple to sell ebooks", and then only granting that certificate to Apple Books, not the Kindle app, that seems anti-competitive.
If the industry wants better open standards, they the participants should develop those standards and build devices that implement those standards.
What Apple does outside of such standards is nobody else's business - as long as they correctly implement and support the industry standards.
which is the point here.
If they made a new feature, something AR based, they are totally allowed to build that and keep it relatively private for a few years. What they can't do is when competition appears, actively keep them off their platform. For example if a device manufacturer manages to make an AR device that works well with android, but its impossible with apple and apple have significant market share, then that would be illegal.
The point of this is to stop thiefdoms and to keep innovation. You're allowed to have a competitive advantage, you're not allowed to build a monopoly.
(if we look at defence, budgets are still very high, but the rate of innovation has plummeted compared to other industries. Its only now with the spur of VC cash into non-traditional backgrounds are we seeing innovation again)
It is, if we're talking about features designed to boost sales of your other products while preventing competitors from offering those features.
Look, even if they're able to compete fairly, those competitors might remain inferior options for other reasons. But Apple having to compete will make their products better. All of their best achievements came from fierce competition as the underdog. Apple's current situation is not good for it.
Must they get these passed in the standards committees first?
--> If iOS introduces non-standard changes to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to compete against Android, this does not concern the DMA.
--> If iOS introduces non-standard changes to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to create a product of ANOTHER market-segment (Headphones, Watches, Routers,...) they are required to provide interoperability for other brands than Apple as well.
The reason is simple: iOS has such a critical size that it is anti-competitive behavior for Apple to modify iOS in order to beat the competition on e.g. headphones.
Yes, apple did the R&D to figure out how to let their watch filter notifications by app, and it must have cost them so much to be able to filter notifications that it has to be locked into their watch. That's not them being intentionally anti-competitive, it's just R&D costs, sure, I'm sure it cost a ton to make that private API.
The more cogent argument is that if apple doesn't want to spend money making their phone work with smartwatches, they do not have to make it work with smartwatches.
They want it to work with watches so users buy the phone.
If they want it to work with _only_ their watch, then sure, they make more money, but they also harm the user and market in the long-term by making it so competitors aren't on an even playing field.
Do you just kinda believe anti-competitiveness doesn't exist?
Should apple be allowed to make it so you can't communicate with android users at all to increase sales (which they already more-or-less did)? Should they intentionally make it so you can't play the music you purchased on non-apple devices by breaking "iTunes for windows"?
1. Api designed for internal use could take shortcuts and let’s say use secrets that are and should be internal, or run things as root or something.
2. Proper API maintenance includes at least documentation and some kind of update path/schedule. Internally it’s simpler. (E.g. you must be sure not to leak secret stuff in docs)
But in the end I agree with the notion that these changes for Apple are not a huge burden. (Existing behaviour is anticompetitive)
I see no reason it cannot be a private entitlement similar to the other sensitive entitlements on iOS.
This isn't exposing business logic, this is an operating system vendor deciding what it exposes to vendors. There is clearly an API that the apple watch is using to communicate with the OS, why shouldn't other vendors be allowed to access this?
If you're astounded by hackers asking practical questions, maybe you should stop carrying water for corps and see how your back feels. Let's talk shop, what are the roadblocks Apple faces here?
This prevents Apple the platform provider and gatekeeper from giving preferential treatment to Apple the Smartwatch/Headphones/Payment/Entertainment provider
What Apple do slightly differently is that they half-ass the standardization, and then chuck it in the trash. Amounts of efforts spent is within the ballpark.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/
Apple makes money by selling devices. With giant profit margins, at that.
So why should they be able to charge developers in addition to consumers?
Apple also benefitted from third-party developers writing software for its platform. Remember the "there's an app for that" ads?
I think developers deserve to be treated fairly by Apple, not exploited four different ways. Because to develop for Apple you need:
1. Buy Apple hardware, because Apple doesn't provide cross-platform development tools (unlike Android or even Microsoft).
2. Pay $100 a year just to be able to publish the software.
3. Pay 30% of the app income to Apple (this changed only recently).
4. Have to endure odious restrictions imposed only because Apple wants to keep control of its platform.
This is among the biggest fictions of this crazed argument. Spotify, the company that whines about Apple the most, pays Apple $0 (sorry, $99) for building the entire market for consumer mobile internet upon which their business depends.
You mean, Apple leeches that glomped onto Spotify success to prop up the iOS market share? When not having Spotify meant that people might end up moving to Android? And yet they still required Spotify to pay 30% up until 2022, when the "reader app" exemption was made?
Remember when Apple offered Spotify private APIs for subscription control to work around the iOS App Store piss-poor subscription management?
That Spotify?
The parent is right. Resorting to catch-22s proves how utterly indefensible your stance is.
Net sales: $119575 billion, net income $33916. Margin: 28%
I agree on both side some money needs to be exchanged in terms of features and Apple cant have it all to themselves. But currently it doesn't seems both side is listening and no middle ground. One side wants it all for free, the other side dont want their money and wants to keep everything themselves.
It's bizarre that you're even framing this conversation in this way - who are you to say how Apple is allowed to behave, and how anti-competitive they deserve to be on the EU market? Are you under the impression that corporations like Apple should wield more power than world governments?
They shouldn't and they don't, but they think they can bully the EU into submission. They wouldn't dare pull this crap in China, they make every concession to be allowed access to the Chinese market. Yet the EU is expected to ask dear Apple for permission to be allowed to regulate their destructive anti-competitive behavior? Insanity.
More like that governments shouldn't dictate such terms and let the market decide - they should just prevent collusion and regulatory capture monopolies.
This is the opposite, an organically grown market share.
It was found to be exactly NOT an organically grown market share in Headphones and Smart Watches.
The DMA identified that Apple owns a significant portion of the playing field for those market (iOS), and modified them to ensure a competitive advantage ONLY for their brands.
This is being rectified now, at least for the EU.
Is there any reason why you're picking your words so carefully as to include "regulatory capture monopolies" but exclude "anti-competitive behavior" as the umbrella term?
Regulating anti-competitive behavior is precisely what the EU is doing with the Digital Markets Act. The EU recognizes that a company does not need to be a monopoly to have severely detrimental effects on the free market.
Let's see... How much should Apple pay to the European Union to be allowed to sell devices there? I say 50% of gross income?
They violated the law, so they deserve to be properly disciplined for that.
Someone at Apple did math on this and it's not worth their time to make this feature interoperable just for the EU market. That's because of this law. They wouldn't have even considered it without the law.
If they refrain from distorting the market in their favor (and instead "retreat and rally up the userbase") the DMA seems to work surprisingly well so far...
The procedures with the EU are quite interesting here, Apple was exchanging extensively for more than a year on how to reach compliance, then the decision [0] was made.
There are also separate procedures for the specification of compliance and investigating (non)compliance.
This gives Apple little room to argue on violation of the DMA later-on, because they were actively involved in defining the criteria beforehand.
So it's possible that they currently just need to find a mode to achieve launch-parity for EU on such features, and they're not there yet.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
There are a few clear precedents where Apple held a feature back in the EU, then shipped later and/or exposed a path others could plug into:
Apple Intelligence: Announced as “not at launch” in the EU in 2024, then rolled out to EU users with iOS 18.4 in spring 2025 (most features). One carve-out remains: Live Translation with AirPods
NFC access for third-party wallets (HCE): After an EU antitrust case, Apple committed to open iPhone NFC (“tap-to-pay”) via Host Card Emulation, let users set a default non-Apple wallet, support Field Detect/Double-click flows, etc., so a genuine “build a platform others can plug into.” The Commission made these commitments legally binding for 10 years.
With iOS 17.4 Apple created EU-only entitlements for non-WebKit engines (e.g., full Chromium/Gecko), so browser makers can ship their own engines on iPhone/iPad in the EU.
Home-screen web apps (PWAs) reversal: Apple initially said PWAs would go away in the EU for 17.4, then reversed and kept them—implemented on WebKit with the usual security model.
Alternative app distribution (marketplaces + web distribution): In response to the DMA, Apple shipped EU-only APIs/entitlements for third-party app marketplaces and later web distribution (direct from developer sites) with notarization, installation, backup/restore hooks, etc.
Tap to Pay on iPhone (SoftPOS): Apple’s merchant “no extra hardware” payments feature expanded across EU countries and is designed for platforms like Adyen/Stripe/Mollie to integrate via SDKs
On the other hand, what is to prevent another ear bud manufacturer writing an iPhone app their ear buds connects to that provides translation? Is this really a hardware feature in the phone? If it’s just software at the phone end, as long as other manufacturers have the feature access to implement this themselves, surely that’s their problem? Why should apple offer translation software as a service to other companies for free? I can see the argument for hardware but not software that others could implement themselves on iPhones.
The only one clearly DMA related with EU specific unlocks are:
* app store
* browser engines
The DMA could have been just an app store regulation. It seems to have had its intended effect there. Very very unproven outside of it. At best you've shown no harm other than delay in some areas.
I'm assuming NFC lawsuits are separate from the DMA but could be mistaken. But in any event NFC payments already existed and aren't a new feature apple decided to release under the DMA.
The upside for the user is to have a larger variety of devices to choose from, each with similar interoperability with his Apple device.
The upside for the market is that all vendors are technically able to compete on the same terms. Apple is not allowed to operate a market, invite others to compete but also participate as a player with preferential treatment.
This is already decided for the existing features of Airpods, Apple Watch, etc. Apple is trying to rally its userbase against the EU by withholding new features now, in hopes that they can secure their skewed playing-field
That is the dream of the dma. It has not been proven to be the reality.
The reality could very well be that EU users just don’t get features. Apple doesn’t have to play ball.
But no, the goal is not to make consumers better off, but citizens and nations better off. And their interests do not stop at $PRODUCT. Namely, they probably don't want a slow slide into serfdom to foreign corporations that abused their market power.
So your belief is that, if DMA didn't exist, Apple still would not ship this feature in the EU?
It's fine if Apple decided to refrain from its anti-competitive behavior in the headphone market because it's not economically viable to have this feature as a generic OS feature.
They know best and are free to do that.
There are huge hosts of software and hardware that work better because of an ecosystem of interoperable components. That’s not anticompetitive, it’s the benefit of good design with compounding returns.
As the manufacturing process and software becomes less complicated, there is a natural trend towards budget competitors (see: SaaS in 2025) that can replicate functionality they know has a market.
The idea that making it unappealing to make an integrated product is good for consumers — or anticompetitive — seems so wrong that it’s farcical. There are definitely cases where verticalization can harm consumers, but this opens the space for good competition. Perplexity wouldn’t exist if Google actually cared about search customers. Internet Explorer didn’t have to be regulated out of existence — by virtue of sucking, there is opportunity.
What they CAN'T do is maintain an environment where their products cannot be met with fair competition by other players, by intentionally giving advantages in the ecosystem only to their own brands.
Apple might not dominate the market for fitness trackers above 150USD today if they wouldn't have prevented others to achieve the same interoperability with their iOS ecosystem.
Apples featureset for wellness tracking was not competitive, neither in function nor in price. Fitbit and Garmin were better in doing that task, but they were not able to display message notifications, apps, etc. because the required interfaces in iOS were only available to Apple's Watch.
Maybe Apple would have beaten them in 2nd Gen, maybe competitors would have followed with equally tight iOS-interoperability in 2nd Gen.
Maybe Apple Watch would nonetheless be the leading Smartwatch in the market today. Or maybe it would be e.g. the Moto360 (google it) just due to Apple's "virtue of sucking" and insistence of doing rectangular watches.
We don't know, because none of the other players are able to compete on fair terms with Apple in this segment until today. And today Apple has such a leap-start that it's questionable whether this can still be rectified.
Let's not pretend like Apple isn't doing everything it can to turn its EU users against their government by complying with the DMA in the most obtuse, disruptive, and useless ways possible. They're risking fines and further punishments betting that they can ultimately subvert the democratic process that put in place laws that would require more developer and user freedom. To Apple, the threat of users owning their computers is an existential one.
Subverting democracy, to me, would involve things like dark money campaigns and lobbying.
The issue is that Apple isn't following the law. It's breaking it and then miming to its customers that its actions are on account of the law. That misrepresentation is meant to convince citizens of the EU that DMA is a bad law with consequences they don't support so that they pressure their representatives to get it removed.
It's Apple making a big show of directly harming consumers as part of a misinformation campaign to get policy that limits their power repealed. To me that reaches the bar for subverting democracy.
The law requires Apple to provide equal access to the iPhone hardware and software in marketplaces that it competes in.
That can be done in a manner that is either additive, by providing access to third parties (which is potentially a significant expense and liability) or subtractive, by choosing not to engage in the regulated activities at all, in that jurisdiction.
In this case they're merely being obtuse by refusing to provide an API to other device manufacturers. Unless you genuinely believe that the cost/benefit analysis of adding a new feature to their OS dictates that they basically freeze development unless they're able to recoup costs by tying it to their accessories, then you must conclude that they made the live transcription API Apple-only, and therefore not DMA-compatible, only to make EU citizens feel like their laws were depriving them of new features.
An organization interested in good-faith compliance would expose their internal API surface with some vetting process for access by interested parties. Then as the API becomes stable they would open it up more broadly. If accused of being anti-competitive by restricting access they could easily and correctly argue that they were working with potential competitors on that stable and secure API, and that their actions balanced the interests of market competition and security.
Of course, Apple is not interested in good-faith compliance. It's my belief that they should be made an example of so that they and other companies running the math in the future decide that proactive and good-faith compliance with regulations is more cost-effective than attempting to fight them.
Inventing a substandard product and using your market dominance in one area to ensure that nobody can compete with your substandard product is as far detached from innovation as you can possibly be. One size fits all solution with centrally planned development where one person knows best and competition isn't considered a driver of progress, isn't that a very communism-shaped approach to "innovation"?
I'm not even joking here and it's bizarre that I'm having to promote the good parts of free market capitalism to someone who claims to care about innovation.
That reminds me of Zukerberg's bluff saying he's going to leave the EU which lasted exactly one day.
But they were found to have already skewed the market with several Apple-accessory-exclusive iOS-features in the past (Proximity pairing, Watch-integration, etc.) and for those they have to provide interoperability now.
They worked with the EU for a year now on how exactly they should reach compliance, then the ruling was made, ordering them to make such interoperability features also available to other brands than Apple.
Now it seems that they try to rally their userbase against that ruling, in hopes to create a political climate that gets the ruling revoked again...
The reality is that, if Apple conforms non-maliciously, they're proving that the law is reasonable and they can do it while remaining profit. Um, that's a huge problem.
They require the plausible deniability of "oh we can't do this, it's too expensive!" Otherwise, other governments (US) might look to implementing similar laws. So, it's a long con. They're burning lots of money, now, with the hope it allows them to continue their anti-competitive behavior for longer. If they're REALLY lucky, they might even stall out the EU and get the EU to backtrack on their laws. That's the golden scenario.
Thats would involve exposing public api ie “a burden”
A duelist was found to arrive with a gun to a knife-fight and is asked to either allow everyone a gun or use a knife.
Now we're arguing that it's a burden to him because bringing a gun is his innovative approach to win knife-fights, and making it a gunfight or keeping it a knife-fight is hindering the innovation he brings.
Apple OWNS the terms for this fight. If they believe that their fights should evolve to be gun-fights then all players should have guns.
It was decided that they can't continue restricting guns while shooting all knife-duelists, at least not in the EU.
Why don't the other players make their own smartphones and smartphone OS and then "implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering"?
Is it fair to force another player to let you hijack their ecosystem?
With iOS Apple owns the playing field where all accessory vendors compete, and Apple competes on the same field. There is no healthy competition possible if Apple puts the finger on the scale to ensure it always wins.
Was that an unearned position due to regulatory capture or something, or did people buy their stuff, even if it's more expensive?
Is it even a dominant position with no recourse? (last I heard Android has more share in the EU and the world). Did they collude with Google and other smartphone vendors to not allow them to build and allow similar features themselves?
>With iOS Apple owns the playing field where all accessory vendors compete, and Apple competes on the same field
Isn't that playing field their own OS and device ecosystem, they build?
> Isn't that playing field their own OS and device ecosystem, they build?
That playing field is their own OS, and the entire ecosystem of all accessory brands.
That's not an answer, it's a decree.
Others can make their own phones and headphones just for their own devices, did Apple stop them?
Doesn't mean it's an answer to the issue why that should be the case.
Not very convincing.
Also, you're confusing markets here. We're not talking about the smartphone market. We're talking about the market of apple accessories.
Apple solely controls that market and also participates in it. Its a true monopoly.
Don't see how it relates to competition but it doesn't matter: Apple competitors should have the same access to the system as Apple does.
Also, don't be naive: this is about money and being able to sell airpods at insane margins by giving them unfair advantages that aren't given to com[etitors.
My sony headphones claim they do all kinds of magic stuff through the app, but I guess that's not a realtime feature, more like a regularly scheduled calibration
So... Apple?
My headphones certainly don't have trouble connecting to a device of any manufacturer without loss of functionality, but some of the "citizenry" seems to fall for marketing materials saying only apple can do things securely and in an integrated manner
This is more of an iPhone / iOS feature which uses the airpods as the microphone and audio output.
Right, so why can’t I connect my non-apple Bluetooth mic + audio output and get the same functionality?
Either it’s an airpods thing and it should work airpods + any host device; or it’s an iPhone thing and should work with any iphone + audio device
Exactly. And Apple intends to keep it that way ;)
But, they won't, because they rely on that moat to keep competitors out. It's exactly the same at the lightning cable.
Many of those standards are objectively poor. I don’t want to live in the world where what we are allowed to use is defined by the lowest common denominator of mediocre engineers.
Mediocrity über alles is what you are tacitly advocating for. I’ve been part of many standards processes where the majority democratic outcome was low-quality low-effort standards that were extraordinarily wasteful and inefficient because the people making the standards didn’t care, it was all about what was expedient for them. This is the default state of humanity. No one should be forced to comply with that garbage by regulatory fiat if they don’t want to.
Okay, fine, I already covered for this. If your new protocol is really the bees knees, then open it, problem solved.
> No one should be forced to comply with that garbage by regulatory fiat if they don’t want to.
They're not.
Lighting was an incredible boon in an era of micro usb, people just seem to forget how shit everyone else was. Now we have usb-c where companies are required to supply the port but doesn’t have to follow any actual specification, yay for standards.
Okay, if their hardware is esoteric, open the protocols for interacting with hardware.
> Should they give away every hardware design needed too?
Yeah probably. It would be a lot better, more like x86. We would actually get repairable phones instead of landfill fodder. But that's a different issue.
> Lighting was an incredible boon in an era of micro usb, people just seem to forget how shit everyone else was. Now we have usb-c where companies are required to supply the port but doesn’t have to follow any actual specification, yay for standards.
And then it became a cheap scam, whereby Apple made a few dollars off of every single lightning cable produced by anyone on Earth due to licensing.
Also, as for USB-C - doesnt matter, still better. My chargers work across multiple devices. Yes, there's some standards noncompliance, this is still a huge improvement over ZERO cross compatibility.
ARM and phone manufacturing is a hot mess in comparison. We're still trying to reverse engineer M series MacBooks and iPhones are off limits. Android is also not open source, no AOSP does not count.
There would be a lot more competition in the space if the hardware had proper specs, like x86 does.
It’s great that documentation exists, but it doesn’t make for competition. ARM is at least licensing out to more than two manufacturers.
However, I'm happy with the decision. Sure, they are not available right now. But it's worth it for the long term picture. Imagine if this would be yet another Apple/Google-only market.
The tradeoff is right IMO.
And the users here on HN saying "it's expensive/difficult to give the same access to competitors" are beyond naive if they think this isn't about protecting the margins on the airpods by giving their own products access to the system competitors don't have.
One consequence of the DMA is that you can't build certain products because there is no way to recoup the development cost.
No, but that's how Apple continuously tries to frame it.
By the ruling of the DMA, Apple is not allowed to develop a free feature in iOS (!!!) in order to recoup the cost by restricting it to their own brands and crushing the competition with it in ANOTHER product-segment.
They could easily make this live translation feature a separate app using publicly available iOS-APIs. Every competitor would be able to develop and provide the same feature.
Ah, not integrated enough for them? Fair enough, then their integration needs to provide interoperability for competitors.
Instead they are trying to rally their userbase against the DMA in hopes to create a political climate in their favor.
Features like that can sell the phone, that's where you recoup the costs obviously, yet it seems like the only focus is keeping airpod margins lol.
Poor, poor Apple…
You recoup the costs by *selling more iphones* because they have functionality the competition does not have.
Investing in your platform is not "giving it away for free", it's making sure consumers have reasons to buy your products and not competitors.
If tomorrow Samsung phones offer this out of the box, and any earbuds maker can access it Samsung will gain sales and users that would've looked at iPhones for this feature won't.
The lengths people will go to justify nonsensical margin-protecting walled garden business choices is insane.
However:
1/ There are obvious downsides to the lack of competition.
2/ In this case, the proprietary protocol that AirPods use is not revolutionary R&D, to say the least! Any competent software engineer can create a new protocol superior to bluetooth if they can drop compatibility with bluetooth.
Hard disagree.
The time and resources it takes to lock down an ecosystem are far greater than not locking it down.
Apple loses the forced bundling but they'll do fine without it and it's a good thing for everyone else.
Have you ever built a software product with an API? Would you say it was trivial upfront and ongoing to build and support this API?
This is NOT expected from Apple and explicitly noted in the ruling.
They are simply not allowed to restrict OS features from competitors in order to frame them as Apple accessory features, because this distorts the competition in this accessory market
I'm not asking for them to do any work beyond that level for non-Apple devices. If those devices need to run fancy code to make the feature work, that fancy code isn't Apple's job.
(But if the feature just needs to listen to the microphone feed, then I do expect it to work out of the box with any headset. (The firmware updates they're doing to older airpods are not clear evidence one way or the other whether it actually needs on-headset support.))
The same reason they endure the burden of safety certification and employment requirements: it’s the law. It’s not exactly a new concept.
And yes, it also happens to be a good law that promotes competition and curbs anti-competitive abuses.
"Can not" as in "unable because Apple doesn't allow that". All Apple needs to do is whitelist access to certain APIs and provide minimal documentation.
> A barely hacked-together API that's hard to use without constantly pinging the team who implemented it - entirely normal for the first release of a big new feature - wouldn't be enough.
Oh, so Apple can't be bothered to be held to the same standard as, say, automotive developers?
I would have more sympathy for Apple if they behaved ethically, respecting developers and users. They absolutely do not behave ethically, preferring to exploit everything they can.
Turnaround is a fair play, so I'm going to shed zero tears if Apple is forced to spend a couple hundred million dollars (at most) adapting their internal documentation for their APIs.
Seems easy enough to me, all they have to do is expose and document an api.
It's ok to wait longer for a product to make sure it's safe instead of the ol' "move fast and break things". Having ever new "interesting" stuff to play with to feed our endless boredom is not the only thing worth caring about.
Of course then they wouldn't get the ecosystem lock-in they want. In theory. But I know plenty of people who buy Airpods "because" they're "the best", without ecosystem integration considerations.
But if it is internal, then you control both ends of the API, and can change them in tandem.
What made it popular were the nice new features. Regardless of how difficult it was for the organization, that is no concern for the user. Taking this easy way allowed them to be faster than others. Sacrificing usability - also making more expensive by lock in - for users of the future!
And yes yes plenty of things go wrong in the EU, I know. Still prefer this over Americas lack of laws and ease of bribing a president.
Well... yeah? I mean, that's the point. Once you are so big you act as a gatekeeper to a platform, the standards change.
Also let's be clear here: there's minimal actual technology inside those pods. The translation is happening on the phone and the stuff going over the air is audio. Yes, it would be harder to specify an interface for third party headset devices to interact with. It certainly wouldn't be impossible, and I think making that a cost of being a platform gatekeeper seems very reasonable.
As no other Headphone vendor is able to do this, this gives Apple the Accessory vendor a competitive advantage in the market of iPhone Accessories. So forces cannot flow freely in this market and the EU requires this to be rectified.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
You could always put environmental audio through Whisper, attain audio trance crypt at 51010 per cent Word error rate, put that transcript through machine translation, and finally TTS. Or you can put audio directly through multimodal LLM for marginal improvements, I guess, but ASR error rate as well as automatic cleanup performance don't seem to have improved significantly after OpenAI Whisper was released.
Was this post the output of such a pipeline, by chance?
For the EU, the issue is that Apple intends to recoup this investment through premium-pricing a different product in another category - one that has many low-cost competitors.
Wouldn't this best be resolved by productising the Apple LLM? Earphone API becomes open, as required by EU. However, use of the Apple LLM would be controlled by license. Earbud competitors could either license Apple's LLM, perhaps on a FRAND basis, or they could install their own LLM on an iOS device. Apple may bundle its LLM but must allow users to uninstall Apple's LLM, to free up space for alternatives.
In short, this isn't and shouldn't be about access to IOS for earbuds. EU is right in this. It's about monetising access to the Apple LLM, for which Apple deserves a revenue stream.
They already tried that with the "Core Technology" fee, and the EU smacked them for it. So doing what you propose is probably a non-starter.
Let’s be serious for a moment. They sell iPhones with enough margin to recoup that investment.
i know some people like to jump at solving technical problems, but sometimes yall need to chill and read the problem twice to be sure the problem is technical to begin with.
As far as I know, Apple is unique in delivering inference on such a tiny device. For this they deserve a reward. The question is how. Like the EU, I don't believe Apple-only premium-priced locked-down earbuds is the right way.
do you even remember the topic you're commenting about? :)
Remember, half of the consideration here is to find a way for Apple to recoup it's investment in LLM. Without creating anti-competitive forces in another market. If you have a different suggestion, or if you think Apple doesn't deserve compensation, make your case.
They could easily make this live translation feature a separate app using publicly available iOS-APIs. Every competitor would be able to develop and provide the same feature.
Ah, not integrated enough for them? Fair enough, then whatever further integration they see fit needs to provide interoperability for competitors.
That's exactly the stance of the EU DMA.
This isn't rocket science: audio goes into mic => STT engine => translation model => TTS engine => audio comes out of speaker. As a fellow hacker here, you could piece together something like this in a weekend on your computer for fun.
As for your question though: they can charge a subscription for using their LLM if they want, or charge for this specific app/feature of iOS. Or just be like me: whenever I'm about to execute on a business plan, I ask myself: "Is this business plan economically feasible without breaking the law?" And if it is not, then I do not do that plan. So far I haven't been cited for illegal conduct by any unions of dozens of countries, so it appears this tactic works.
your post doesn't even get close to the subject
Perhaps the issue you seem to be having is that there's nuance in a position which tries to see an issue from both sides. Whatever is the problem with your comprehension, I advise you to reflect on the fact that others in this thread seem to get it and some have raised valid counterpoints or added relevant information.