Apple will really bend over backwards to screw their customers, even if they are legally bound to. What is the point in making it this complicated? Hope we find a way around this technical limitation, although knowing Apple it isn’t going to be easy.
What do they lose by fighting it tooth and nail? They don't want consumers using 3rd party app stores. Apple users have been plenty happy without them for years, too.
The good news is that once the EU does the heavy lifting of beating Apple into submission, it's relatively easy for other regions to say "enable EU mode for us as well, thanks".
For better or worse, lawmakers are allergic to copying another jurisdiction’s regulations. What we are inevitably going to end up with, if anything, is a mishmash of superficially differing rules between jurisdictions. Apple will either use their infinite resources to maliciously comply with all of them to the minimum degree required, creating an increasingly shittified, fragmented experience. Or, cooler heads will prevail, Apple will admit to themselves that the party is over, and they’ll start complying with the spirit of the law.
Why not make rules for the apps which generate "billions of dollars"? Constrain those apps via special APIs subject to Apple policy. Why stop at 30% extortion, go for more. Leave the rest of apps alone, until a new billion dollar category appears, then it can get the same mafia treatment.
This is Platform Sherlocking 101. Let new crops grow before demanding a cut. Don't scare everyone from farming.
I'm asking why not have application-specific fees and policy, instead of both Apple and regulators dancing around the revenue issue, while using the rhetoric of generic business actors and app-neutral policy.
There's a reason that only gaming companies have taken Apple to court.
Why should the economics of low-volume and low-profit medical or security applications be subject to the business mechanics of addictive games, which generate billions of revenue for Apple and gaming app developers?
Apple says you must be physically located in an EU country to be eligible, as determined by your device, so presumably they are checking GPS and/or cellular location data rather than just IP geolocation.
In that case they'll probably either (a) ignore your setting and check anyway because the OS can do whatever it wants, or (b) default to "not EU" mode until you agree to turn location services on. They're not going to give you an easy workaround, Apple has made it clear they're going to do the bare minimum they can get away with.
This is how the online casinos do it in my state. They require location access on mobile or a dedicated download for desktop.
I recently spent a bit of time trying to bypass the location check (out of curiosity) and they have it pretty locked down.
The key is they require WiFi to be on so they can get around GPS spoofing.
I had even attempted re-creating all the SSIDs and other networks nearby my spoofed location but the existing networks near my real location were reducing the confidence and still getting me flagged.
One thing I learned during this was how complicit browser manufactures are in providing this information. There is no way to enable location services but disable WiFi triangulation in any mainstream browser. If you disable location permissions websites can just outright block you.
End solution was just a remote KVM setup but not exactly what I wanted.
OpenWRT supports changing the BSSID on supported models. I should have been more clear that I matched both the SSID+BSSID. From both a dump I did from the spoofed location and the public online databases.
considering the fact EU has countries with overseas territories and the like, it will likely land them in trouble with the EU fairly quickly because their geo fencing isn't correct
It doesn't matter what Apple says on this topic, the final say on how to interpret DMA lies with the CJEU. The text of the law says Apple must offer the "EU mode" to "end users established or located in the Union". If CJEU rules that a person on a 3-month trip to a different country is still "established in the Union", then Apple will have to abide by that.
This feels like a malicious version of the fair usage exceptions to the EU's mobile phone roaming regulations. I hope the EU tightens up the rules to prevent this as these does not seem to be any justification for this, crossing a border doesn't suddenly add additional cost to Apple.
As a non_EU citizen, I hope other countries follow suite and pass similar laws. So far the EU has single-handedly faced Apple's unethical actions, and while I have several Apple devices, I hope more pressure is put on the company to save it from itself.
I think this third party appstore is an existential threat to apple in the sense that no one jailbreaks there iphone, because they need legit apps, but if the EU allows third party apps stores, then Americans could start jailbreaking their phones and just using third party app stores.
So basically you should avoid using an iphone if you rely on a specific application from a 3rd party app store because apple will cripple it on purpose depending on how you choose to live your life.
Or require it of all devices sold in the EU, regardless of where those devices are later brought. This would be entirely defensible - "we're just regulating products sold within our market" - but inevitably they would make their way outside the EU to be resold.
I’m honestly done with Apple. I’m American but from the horribly locked down devices, anti-repair mechanisms built into devices (ie, software locked feature after non-Apple repair), apple pushing right to repair propaganda through lobbyist groups and “McKinsey” type consultants, and just general abuse from the company towards app developers (ie, high fees charged, “rules for thee, but not for me” such as with Network APIs applied to 3rd party sw but apps like App Store bypass this, stealing of ideas).
Great looking products. But behind those products is a predator looking to extract as much money/time from you.
This is very interesting because there’s really no reason for this limitation to exist with regards to EU users. The only reason I can see for this is that Apple knows their rules are so unpopular that users from the rest of the world might go as far as travel abroad or start trafficking devices to get around them.
Are they? I know developers don’t like the rules, but I don’t know a lot of iPhone owners who feel particularly stifled by them. If they did, presumably they’d just buy an Android phone?
At first the Apps store rules provided an advantage to the Apple ecosystem though. And there are still some advantages that keep people in the ecosystem for now. But Apple needs to evolve their offering.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
I don’t know a lot of iPhone owners who feel particularly stifled by them
Thank you for your deeply anecdotal brush off. Surely it makes those millions nearly imprisoned (try living without a phone) in the modern world by the corporate duopoly feel at ease. Just switch to the other side and solve all the problems.
The other side gives you the possibility of getting a phone with different variations and people also root their phone and sideload apps. I support going the PinePhone route but not sure that's right for the average person.
Apple fearing or assuming their rules are unpopular would be even worse. My point is I don’t see why this limitation exists beyond Apple desperately trying to keep non EU users from using EU app stores.
Who exactly are these developers? Because I'm a developer and I find the idea of supporting multiple app stores absolutely dreadful.
Consider the impact. If we're lucky there will be only one necessary re-implementation something major. At minimum we can expect to rewrite all code paths involving IAP. This will require a thick layer of abstraction caked on top to maintain feature parity between the separate builds, further slowing down compile times and making debugging more cumbersome. Yes, there will be separate builds because we rely on Apple to manage our DWARF symbols. That will need a homegrown solution, all new tooling, which of course will be crappy and half baked for many years. Best keep the builds separate.
Separate builds will likely mean new build/deploy pipelines to manage, possibly each having their own separate staging environments, which eats away at productive development time. Of course this will be all tied together with additional layers of abstraction. All tooling involving the AppStore API will be re-created.
Oh and I pity the poor souls that use react-native and it's convoluted, fragile, build environment. It's going to really suck for them. Cross your fingers and hope for the best when you npm install react-native-alternative-store and it's 500 dependencies written by CoPilot in Objective-C by one unresponsive developer on a GitHub page whose only activity is an increasing number of unresolved issues.
And that's not all! We use AppStore analytics, financial data management, beta test tooling, and internal device management. What will be fate of these services without the App Store? More crappy work and less time spent actually making the product better.
So no, this developer is just fine paying 15 to 30%. It's really a bargain for smaller dev shops.
The only reason why it's probably not going to be worth supporting the other stores is that the userbase is going to be too small, which makes the potential extra revenue you can get in the other store likely too low to justify the support
But 30% is never going to be a bargain, even if you're a solo developer. It's 30% of the company revenue if they're only on the app store. That's likely more then your wage in it's entirely.
As someone who used to be in the field of public relations before starting a career in software - I don't understand why they are doing this. Surely they realise that this stuff is going to end up on mainstream media and damage their image?
EDIT: I get what people are saying about the App Store fees but reputational damage does cost money, possibly quite a lot.
This is to prevent the EU DMA rules (and 3rd party EU app stores) from infecting their other markets.
The idea being, I could travel to the EU (or just buy an EU iPhone), install a 3rd party App Store + apps, then happily use a non-Appstore iPhone outside the EU.
I don't particularly think this "infection" a big risk, but Apple sure seems to.
Apple has been known to abuse their users like this for over a decade. Still somehow they're huge, they have a loyal fanbase of people that make excuses for it to justify their conspicuous consumption. They know it, so they do what they want.
I think you have the right take, because right now exactly zero people are smuggling iPhones out of the EU to use 3rd party app stores. These non-existent smugglings are costing Apple $0
So this is just a PR fiasco and a way for Apple to look like a comic book villain that spites both customers and governments, at no gain to itself. If this thing Apple execs apparently fear more than the Devil himself were to actually happen then OK do the calculus and ban what you think you need to ban. But doing it now is just silly.
Apple used to be a company that was famously good at managing its image, no more it seems. A slow decline into incompetency accompanied by a relentless focus on profit maximization is a classic sign that a company has obtained illegal monopoly rents in one form or another and needs to be brought to justice
I think this is more about reducing support costs than extracting every transaction fee. A major benefit of a walled garden is that you can maintain a controlled system with largely predictable expectations of what problems users will encounter and the costs of providing support.
Say what you want about Apple’s products, but their support is top tier and a major selling point for many consumers. It’s also very expensive to provide.
Relaxing AppStore restrictions reduces both security and expected behavior the phone. People here will argue otherwise, but it is a fact. Alternative web browsers require the ability to make the most dangerous, security compromising system call that can be done by a normal app. Things will inevitably go wrong in ways that Apple cannot control, and users will seek the support they expect. Unfortunately now Apple is at the mercy of Google or whomever to release their own patches while Apple fronts the support costs for problems they didn’t create.
Losing control of the system and being unable to provide the expected level of customer satisfaction is more damaging to the brand than otherwise. Outside of tech circles, nobody cares about alternative app stores or which JIT compiler is running when they browse the web
Though I’m happy to see the 3rd party apps - I really don’t get why people even buy apple devices if they want to side load or do other such things.
In terms of camera quality, battery life, or any single criterion it’s not like apple devices are the best anyway.
As a side note - I really don’t understand the logic that leaves gaming consoles exempt.
As a second side note - how is apple even determining if you are an EU citizen or in an EU country? Presumably GPS, but is the implication that EU users must phone home to apple every 30 days?
> I really don’t get why people even buy apple devices if they want to side load or do other such things.
That's Apple's argument, but it's bs. It's like Microsoft selling you Windows with ads all over the place and then when you complain they say: "I don't understand why you buy Windows if you don't want to see ads, there are other options w/o ads."
A lot of people can't use anything other than Windows because of compatibility issue with their work software...etc. I don't think anyone's forced to use iPhone.
> how is apple even determining if you are an EU citizen or in an EU country
Both cell towers and wifi base stations advertise the country code they're in. Every phone needs to know what jurisdiction it is in order to do things like route emergency services calls or what radio frequency bands to enable.
I wonder if the tracking of location of European users will also be declared illegal under privacy laws, making it illegal for Apple to determine whether or not a European user is in Europe.
There’s a process in iOS called “countryd” that calculates a country code based on sensor data from GPS, cellular and wifi. If the country code matches an EU country, you get DMA features. I assume the thirty days is how long you have to be abroad for the country code to update, but I don’t know that.
The inability to update an app installed from a 3rd party appstore is clearly a threat to the platform integrity of iOS. If Apple believes its own convenient rhetoric [1] it must forcibly uninstall those apps or allow installed apps to continue updating.
No you dont have to accept IP address/GPS tracking most probably.
your iPhone has a phone component inside and that phone component knows exactly (well depending on the tower you are connected to) what country are you in.
PS: yes your cellphone network provider knows pretty accurate when you are entering your country and exiting it.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadWhat do they lose by fighting it tooth and nail? They don't want consumers using 3rd party app stores. Apple users have been plenty happy without them for years, too.
As an iPhone owner I have been annoyed at the walled garden for years.
This is Platform Sherlocking 101. Let new crops grow before demanding a cut. Don't scare everyone from farming.
There's a reason that only gaming companies have taken Apple to court.
Why should the economics of low-volume and low-profit medical or security applications be subject to the business mechanics of addictive games, which generate billions of revenue for Apple and gaming app developers?
The us judgements in fact suggested that epic should have focused on that issue as the unfair bit
I recently spent a bit of time trying to bypass the location check (out of curiosity) and they have it pretty locked down.
The key is they require WiFi to be on so they can get around GPS spoofing.
I had even attempted re-creating all the SSIDs and other networks nearby my spoofed location but the existing networks near my real location were reducing the confidence and still getting me flagged.
One thing I learned during this was how complicit browser manufactures are in providing this information. There is no way to enable location services but disable WiFi triangulation in any mainstream browser. If you disable location permissions websites can just outright block you.
End solution was just a remote KVM setup but not exactly what I wanted.
An opportunity for alternative browsers?
Change the law so that any device sold must comply with the DMA for all EU citizens, regardless of domicile.
Thus, any company that denies a EU citizen under the DMA, even if they live in the US, shall be considered noncomplaint.
Also, to make sure no tricks are used, make sure to specify that it is illegal to require citizenship verification for DMA rights.
Great looking products. But behind those products is a predator looking to extract as much money/time from you.
Are they? I know developers don’t like the rules, but I don’t know a lot of iPhone owners who feel particularly stifled by them. If they did, presumably they’d just buy an Android phone?
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
The existence of iOS Unix shell emulators (iSH, aShell) suggests otherwise, at least on iPads.
Perhaps that will change with forthcoming iPad Pro + macOS-subset VMs.
Who exactly are these developers? Because I'm a developer and I find the idea of supporting multiple app stores absolutely dreadful.
Consider the impact. If we're lucky there will be only one necessary re-implementation something major. At minimum we can expect to rewrite all code paths involving IAP. This will require a thick layer of abstraction caked on top to maintain feature parity between the separate builds, further slowing down compile times and making debugging more cumbersome. Yes, there will be separate builds because we rely on Apple to manage our DWARF symbols. That will need a homegrown solution, all new tooling, which of course will be crappy and half baked for many years. Best keep the builds separate.
Separate builds will likely mean new build/deploy pipelines to manage, possibly each having their own separate staging environments, which eats away at productive development time. Of course this will be all tied together with additional layers of abstraction. All tooling involving the AppStore API will be re-created.
Oh and I pity the poor souls that use react-native and it's convoluted, fragile, build environment. It's going to really suck for them. Cross your fingers and hope for the best when you npm install react-native-alternative-store and it's 500 dependencies written by CoPilot in Objective-C by one unresponsive developer on a GitHub page whose only activity is an increasing number of unresolved issues.
And that's not all! We use AppStore analytics, financial data management, beta test tooling, and internal device management. What will be fate of these services without the App Store? More crappy work and less time spent actually making the product better.
So no, this developer is just fine paying 15 to 30%. It's really a bargain for smaller dev shops.
The only reason why it's probably not going to be worth supporting the other stores is that the userbase is going to be too small, which makes the potential extra revenue you can get in the other store likely too low to justify the support
But 30% is never going to be a bargain, even if you're a solo developer. It's 30% of the company revenue if they're only on the app store. That's likely more then your wage in it's entirely.
EDIT: I get what people are saying about the App Store fees but reputational damage does cost money, possibly quite a lot.
The idea being, I could travel to the EU (or just buy an EU iPhone), install a 3rd party App Store + apps, then happily use a non-Appstore iPhone outside the EU.
I don't particularly think this "infection" a big risk, but Apple sure seems to.
Billions and billions of dollars, that's why.
So this is just a PR fiasco and a way for Apple to look like a comic book villain that spites both customers and governments, at no gain to itself. If this thing Apple execs apparently fear more than the Devil himself were to actually happen then OK do the calculus and ban what you think you need to ban. But doing it now is just silly.
Apple used to be a company that was famously good at managing its image, no more it seems. A slow decline into incompetency accompanied by a relentless focus on profit maximization is a classic sign that a company has obtained illegal monopoly rents in one form or another and needs to be brought to justice
Say what you want about Apple’s products, but their support is top tier and a major selling point for many consumers. It’s also very expensive to provide.
Relaxing AppStore restrictions reduces both security and expected behavior the phone. People here will argue otherwise, but it is a fact. Alternative web browsers require the ability to make the most dangerous, security compromising system call that can be done by a normal app. Things will inevitably go wrong in ways that Apple cannot control, and users will seek the support they expect. Unfortunately now Apple is at the mercy of Google or whomever to release their own patches while Apple fronts the support costs for problems they didn’t create.
Losing control of the system and being unable to provide the expected level of customer satisfaction is more damaging to the brand than otherwise. Outside of tech circles, nobody cares about alternative app stores or which JIT compiler is running when they browse the web
In terms of camera quality, battery life, or any single criterion it’s not like apple devices are the best anyway.
As a side note - I really don’t understand the logic that leaves gaming consoles exempt.
As a second side note - how is apple even determining if you are an EU citizen or in an EU country? Presumably GPS, but is the implication that EU users must phone home to apple every 30 days?
That's Apple's argument, but it's bs. It's like Microsoft selling you Windows with ads all over the place and then when you complain they say: "I don't understand why you buy Windows if you don't want to see ads, there are other options w/o ads."
Both cell towers and wifi base stations advertise the country code they're in. Every phone needs to know what jurisdiction it is in order to do things like route emergency services calls or what radio frequency bands to enable.
Apple beeing evil. I hope they get fined by the EU.
Edit: I suppose technically it could be a client level rejection and the App Store says “idk what went wrong”
[1]: as outlined in, e.g. https://developer.apple.com/security/complying-with-the-dma....
Some more discussion a few days ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39617531
They say it's their on-device indicator, but that could mean many things. GPS, external IP, cell phone masts...
Do I really own the device if I can't control what runs on it?
your iPhone has a phone component inside and that phone component knows exactly (well depending on the tower you are connected to) what country are you in.
PS: yes your cellphone network provider knows pretty accurate when you are entering your country and exiting it.