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The European Commission is going through Apple’s OSes feature by feature, with the help of interested parties and industry collaboration, and deciding where the API lines should be drawn. It’s absolutely fascinating.

And remember, Apple brought all of this on itself through its years of misconduct and inability to follow the law.

Don't miss the 30 pages of proposed specs in the PDFs here (summarized in screenshots here; no alt-text, follow through to original link): digital-markets-act.ec.europa.

How granular is this stuff?

"If Apple presents end users of [3rd-party apps] with a choice regarding the level of background execution capabilities or background connection to a connected physical device, it must present the same choice in the same manner, including regarding time, place, and cadence, to end users of Apple’s connected physical devices. Apple may only present end users with a specific choice […] if Apple implements and offers this choice for its own connected physical device.”

“Apple shall implement the measures above in the next major iOS release, and in any case by the end of 2025 at the latest.”

"Apple shall provide a protocol specification that gives third parties all information required to integrate, access, and control the AirDrop protocol within an application or service (including as part of the operating system) running on a third-party connected physical device in order to allow these applications and services to send files to, and receive files from, an iOS device.”

"For future functionalities of or updates to the AirDrop feature, Apple shall make them available to third parties no later than at the time they are made available to any Apple connected physical device.”

"Apple shall make available the possibility for a third-party connected physical device to become an AirPlay receiver, i.e., allowing the iOS device to cast content to a receiving third-party connected physical device, to all interested third parties independently of the product category, for video, audio, and screen mirroring”

Re AirPlay and Chromecast et al

"Centralised availability: Apple shall allow third-party casting providers to centrally provide their casting solution on iOS, e.g., through an extension, such that end users who install the casting solution can access the third-party casting provider in any third-party app that uses standard media playback APIs without the need for the third-party app developer to integrate an SDK in their applications.”

"For the purpose of ensuring that effective interoperability continues in the future, third parties must also have access to any future feature functionalities and updates of the media casting feature insofar and as soon as they are available to Apple’s AirPlay. For example, if Apple updates AirPlay to stream video at higher resolution, or to allow end users to initiate screen mirroring via an AI assistant, these updates should be made available to third parties as well.”

Again 2025 deadline

"Apple shall not impose any restrictions on the type or use case of the software application and connected physical device that can access or makeuse of the features listed in this Document.

Apple shall not undermine effective interoperability with the 11 features set out in this Document by behaviour of a technical nature. In particular, Apple shall actively take all the necessary actions to allow effective interoperability with these features.”

"Apple shall not impose any contractual or commercial restrictions that would be opaque, unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory towards third parties or otherwise defeat the purpose of enabling effective interoperability. In particular, Apple shall not restrict business users, directly or indirectly, to make use of any interoperability solution in their existing apps via an automatic update.”

EC having to legislate around Apple's poison pills, which is wild. Apple is that untrustworthy

My takeaways from the proposal: the EC is prepared to go into detail on specific features, mandate various avenues of interoperability and APIs required, ensure that Apple can't make them burdensome in implementation or by policy, set a concrete timeframe for the changes to be made (i.e. by next release of iOS), and ensure that Apple can't pull the rug out from under these APIs in the future or self-preference for new or unannounced devices. All the proposals are great, necessary changes

@stroughtonsmith My takeaway is that this is a list of features that, if this proposal is enacted as written (which I believe to be a huge "if”, given the regime changes on both sides of the pond) will no longer be available to EU users at the end of 2025.

@gruber @stroughtonsmith Wouldn't it kill their sales in the EU if they remove all those features?

@jramskov @gruber @stroughtonsmith Suppose their sales go down 15 to 20%. The EU is what — 7% of their global market? That would be maybe a 1% sales hit. 1% is a bummer but the opportunity cost of keeping those features could be considerable.

Put another way, would you dedicate 20% of your engineering staff to save 1% of your sales? Perhaps not.

@bouncing @gruber @stroughtonsmith I could see it becoming more than that. There might be many side effects of such a decision. Companies might stop making apps for Apple's platforms or only spend the minimal amount of effort. Slowly, the user experience of Apple devices would get worse and hurt Apple sales worldwide.

@jramskov @gruber @stroughtonsmith The same is true in reverse though; if there are too many “browser ballot” type user experiences, fewer people will buy iPhones and the ecosystem suffers. I could see an “AirDrop ballet” doing the same.

@jramskov @gruber @stroughtonsmith Also every developer assigned to compliance is a developer not assigned to beating Samsung on new feature development.

@bouncing @gruber @stroughtonsmith Apple could also have decided to make it easier for their developers by making those EU changes/requirements available worldwide, but instead they decided to make it more complex by limiting it to the EU.

@jramskov @gruber @stroughtonsmith I don’t think the region flag is what is technically complicated.

@bouncing @gruber @stroughtonsmith No, but now they have two separate code bases to maintain.

@jramskov @gruber @stroughtonsmith That’s true. But take for example iPhone mirroring, where just not releasing it in the EU was the simplest solution. Having a single codebase would mean no one gets that feature. And it’s a really nice one.

@bouncing @gruber @stroughtonsmith Why would it mean that? I don’t believe the DMA prevents such s feature?

@jramskov @bouncing @stroughtonsmith The DMA seemingly requires Apple to make mirroring available on any device, not just their own brand of PCs (Macs).

@gruber @bouncing @stroughtonsmith Have Apple given any statements that tells us? I haven't seen any other than “it's the DMA” and then everyone can speculate, but nobody really knows. It could certainly be that they should make it possible to do on Windows laptops, etc. as well. That would make it a bigger job for them to implement a public API/standard for it. To make the market work, different rules are required for the gatekeepers.

@jramskov @gruber @stroughtonsmith Setting aside the business case that might exist against supporting competitors’ devices, any software developer can tell you what a poison scope creep is to a project and it getting green lighted.

Going from mirroring iPhones on Macs to mirroring any device on any computer is beyond scope creep: it’s going from making a single feature to starting a reference implementation for a new standard.

@bouncing @gruber @stroughtonsmith No doubt and I'm not surprised Apple don't like it. However, I’m so far on the EC side - it is way to early to conclude anything about how well the DMA work, but I agree with the premise about gatekeepers. These companies have become so big and have so much power they are basically monopolies without being it in the traditional sense.

@jramskov @bouncing @stroughtonsmith It’s too early, of course, but to pass final judgment on the DMA’s practical effectiveness, but we can fairly say that so far the only practical effectiveness is to allow EU iOS users to play Fortnite again.

jramskov

@gruber @bouncing @stroughtonsmith I don’t think it makes sense to look at the effects yet.
I could make the argument that I didn’t expect anything yet, but look, something has already happened.