Breaches of the DMA can result in companies being fined 10% of worldwide revenue, or 20% if they reoffend. Based on Apple’s 2024 revenue of $391bn (£301bn), the maximum fine would be nearly $80bn.
…
The commission told Apple it must make its operating systems available to devices made by competitors, such as smartphones and wireless headphones, or else face the prospect of investigations and fines.
Apple must allow competitors to use/sell/load iOS? Or be fined $80 billion?
What?
If anybody wants to buy a copy of iOS and put it on their system, who cares?
I’m curious, what problem are they trying to solve? Third party equipment and apps have access to the ios for testing and even get pre releases of upgrades. If I don’t like Apple I can go elsewhere, as billions worldwide do.
As a consumer, how am I being screwed by Apple not making its operating system available to competitors?
It (well, macOS at least) is available for third-party hardware. Google “hackintosh”. I’m sure someone determined enough could get iOS running on third-party hardware too, but what’s the point? Apple’s hardware is pretty nice, even if it is overpriced.
Obviously it isn’t supported, and the list of hardware it works on is limited, but it is possible. Or is the eu going to force Apple to support the third-party hardware as well?
What will the EU do if Apple says “get stuffed”?
No new iphones etc on sale in the EU from tomorrow
London’s Apple store has to hire a team of multilingual sales assistants to handle the queues of Europeans wanting a new digital watch for their daughters’ birthdays.
The EU Commission is copying the US Congress in claiming to replace the UN as ruler of the whole world
Ever thought about growing a competitor to Apple, EU? Oh…
Yeah, hackintoshes. With Apple Silicon there’s little point. You buy an Apple product because it’s an appliance, just as Jobs intended, not because it’s something to tinker with, or “corporate”.
People at work are generally forced to use Windows. People at home can use what they like. People everywhere – even at work – use iPhones if they want to. Apart from work – understandable standardisation – that looks like a functioning market to me.
The EU is a collective moron
There are perfectly good competitors to Google play, f-droid and aurora spring to minfd
Maybe apple should just release all data held on its devices within the EU and see what shakes out?
Transparency and all
We get to use Apple laptops at one of my workplaces – but only after IT have applied controls that remove or disable everything that makes Apple more usable/useful – so it ends up being dumbed down to Windows level in the name of allowing IT control and for ‘security’ – I hadn’t realised that apps such as Apple Maps, Safari and being able to wirelessly display on an AppleTV were so insecure – nothing on the internet to explain this, but our IT guys are insistent that these cause security problems.
Same place also allows personal iPhones for corp email, but only if you install a profile that then blocks iBooks (cant be buying the wrong books), disables iCloud – so no backups, disables Photos etc – all in the name of ‘security’ and this on a personal phone – no surprise no one has corp email etc on their phones.
I suspect poor reporting here. Not iOS, but the ability to enter their “walled gardens”..
The EU, and the UK have a serious problem that a significant portion of industrial and consumer activity now goes through a handful of American corporations. It’s very effective rent seeking. Apple in particular takes a very high percentage (30%?) of the costs of an app on it’s phones, and has (rather arbitrary) say on what does and doesn’t appear in the app store. In turn, Google search results and recommendations have not been ‘fair’ for at least a decade.
From an outside perspective, it walks like a monopoly and quacks like a monopoly – and the nature of these internet-scale businesses is that you can’t just wave it away and say a competitor will naturally emerge. It’s simply not economically possible to build something that has a competitive advantage.
It’s fair to argue the EU is crap at handling this, but it is a genuine problem (and the UK is in complete denial). If you booked a holiday in the last year it was almost certainly through an American company, paid via an American payment provider. Booked a hire car – American company. Sent a parcel – American company. It’s a long list and the problem here is not that there aren’t cheaper local alternatives (there are) it’s that you almost certainly won’t find them through your phone or web browser. I’ve worked for these companies and we spend billions making sure you don’t see anything that isn’t one of the big providers.
I’ve been an Apple user since 1987. Back then it was simply the most pleasing platform for music sequencing. I didn’t start using my Mac Plus as a “computer” until 1990 when I started R&D consultancy. Then I noticed PCs and the systems they ran. They seemed quick and efficient but to me looked ugly. Sorry.
Then the platform wars, in which I was as misguidedly partisan as anyone. OSs, sequencers, you name it.
Then eventually I was obliged to get a mobile phone, and deal with non-existent or shit software when trying to sync my contacts between it and my Mac. Everywhere I looked I ran into this “serious people use Windows” attitude. Who wants to sync their phone with a Mac?
Then Jobs released the iPhone. Everyone realised that that was what a smartphone was supposed to look like and do, and everyone wanted one. Event the corporate cunts. Suddenly, everyone is falling over themselves to integrate iOS into the “enterprise” environment.
The iPhone was a brilliant wedge attack that smashed the Microsoft monopoly. It led the way for Android, which opened the market further, and moved the focus of IT away from proprietary apps running on Windows PCs to platform-neutral information exchange. Apple had done the world a huge favour and in due course became the wold’s most valuable company by market cap.
So no good turn goes unpunished hy the EU, eh?
Zaichik
Casting is bloody insecure.
I’ve blocked it on the works computer. If they want to use the telly, they can plug into the hdmi port.
DHL and Hermes are both owned by the krauts
Ottokring – agree casting (used by PCs and Android phones) is considered insecure. Airplay from a Mac generally is not considered insecure as it is encrypted.
Our IT ‘experts’ allow ‘casting’ from a Windows device or android phone, but block airplay on apple devices because ‘insecure’
DHL and Hermes are both owned by the krauts
No sane person sends things through Hermes… 😀
The point stands though. We can’t even buy potatoes from our local farmers market without paying with an American Debit card, through an American phone via an American payment provider.
“We can’t even buy potatoes from our local farmers market without paying with an American Debit card, through an American phone via an American payment provider.”
I bet your farmer wouldn’t say no to cash.
“It’s fair to argue the EU is crap at handling this, but it is a genuine problem (and the UK is in complete denial). If you booked a holiday in the last year it was almost certainly through an American company, paid via an American payment provider. Booked a hire car – American company. Sent a parcel – American company. It’s a long list and the problem here is not that there aren’t cheaper local alternatives (there are) it’s that you almost certainly won’t find them through your phone or web browser. I’ve worked for these companies and we spend billions making sure you don’t see anything that isn’t one of the big providers.”
1) I don’t mind buying things from people who are good at making them, so I really don’t see the problem here. This is just comparative advantage at work.
2) Anti-trust is not (or rather should not be) about protecting local producers.
3) The fact that the big providers need to spend billions marketing their products is not evidene of monopoly or abuse of power. On the contrary
>I bet your farmer wouldn’t say no to cash
If it’s anything like the UK,
– cash isn’t useful for paying suppliers, taxes, employees, etc. because they won’t take it
– business banking (a market with not a lot of competition) charges a higher fee to deposit cash than the card processors (a market with lots of competition) do to take a debit card payment
This didn’t used to be the case, but since the last ten years or so, cash has been more expensive to deal with than card has, at least in businesses that have a net cash flow in one direction or the other.
The Mac platform (OSX) is certainly no less secure than Windows and because it’s Unix underneath, it’s very likely MORE secure. There are certainly some features an IT team would want to lock down, depending on the level of trust of the end-users. I’ve been an Apple user (Mac, iPhone etc) for over 25 years at home and in the early part of my career supported them too. I’ve found the Mac to be an absolute pleasure to use and manage for the most part.
The EU’s regulations over side loading on iOS devices I think are a bit draconian and that secure walled garden is one of the things I like about the platform. It’s way more secure than the wild wild west of Android. If people want that level of freedom on their mobile appliances there’s nothing stopping them, but a lot of folks just want a phone with an app store they can mostly trust. The EU is solving a problem that doesn’t really exist, but it wouldn’t be the first time would it?
The EU isn’t solving a problem that didn’t really exist, it’s deliberately creating a new problem that didn’t exist before.
To what end? No-one is forced to buy Apple, and that walled garden actually has an exit gate. It’s not hard to leave. Your data? All portable. Apps? So what? Who buys digital music and films any more? Everyone streams. You want an object, you buy vinyl.
1) I don’t mind buying things from people who are good at making them, so I really don’t see the problem here. This is just comparative advantage at work.
You do know that the point of a monopoly is prices can go up and quality can go down? Go and look what AirBNB has done to the short term rentals market – it’s fucked. Many small businesses in the UK find they can’t actually sell their own products cheaper than Amazon does because of the service costs involved with online selling.
2) Anti-trust is not (or rather should not be) about protecting local producers.
As I said, the EU is crap at this – but is this necessarily solely an anti-trust problem? It would be great if the issue was purely moving legacy jobs over to an overseas supplier that can do it cheaper than we can – but it isn’t. It’s infantilising whole industries and preventing new businesses from being formed. We can actually still build things at competitive rates in Europe, but can’t then sell them because someone else has control of the market entrance points.
3) The fact that the big providers need to spend billions marketing their products is not evidene of monopoly or abuse of power. On the contrary
That’s a surreal argument: “It’s not a monopoly because the people who have the monopoly pay to maintain the monopoly”… really?
To what end? No-one is forced to buy Apple, and that walled garden actually has an exit gate.
It’s Apple or Android for 99.99% of consumers, and both companies manipulate the market and have rent-seeking behaviours. What exact exit gate are you hallucinating?
It’s also Boeing or Airbus, who between them over the past 40 years have enabled even the poorest people around the world to travel. Er, to our detriment. Android has the market share but Apple (and Samsung) makes most of the profit. You want an alternative, there’s always China or North Korea, both of which have OSs. I don’t think anywhere in Africa does.
This is the endgame of economy of scale plus technical and manufacturing complexity. Only a few large organisations are capable of it, and you end up with duopoly or triopoly. But it doesn’t last forever; corporations grow old, sclerotic, and die. Boeing is doing exactly that. Embraer and ATR have the regional airliner market, and the Chinese are just getting going with their A320 copy, right at the time when the West – particularly the US – is losing competence as a consequence of DIE hiring.
The Android/iOS duopoly won’t last, because it can’t.
The Android/iOS duopoly won’t last, because it can’t.
I think you’re making my argument for me. These things should die – and we should absolutely avoid them being artificially prolonged by market manipulation. It’s called a walled garden for a reason – but if there are better things coming, shouldn’t we be making sure the wall doesn’t last?
TBH,
“The Mac platform (OSX) is certainly no less secure than Windows and because it’s Unix underneath, it’s very likely MORE secure. ”
This is a rather outdated view, and based on earlier versions of Windows vs Mac, when Windows was essentially nothing but a standalone desktop computer.
Mac OSX is based on BSD UNIX. Which might then have been modified by Apple guys. After which, there’s a load of service layers, UI layers and trusted built-in applications. All of which can have vulnerabilities.
Apple are actually one of the worst companies for security, because most of their customers aren’t that bothered. It’s not like Windows or Linux where there are giant, valuable databases that run on their servers and you absolutely 100% do not want someone being able to get privilege escalation or to be able to dump a message to the webserver that causes a buffer overflow and corrupts data. It’s people doing a bit of art or viewing Facebook.
There are security bugs in things like Safari and Mail that have ended up released in the wild because 3 months after someone reported it to Apple, they hadn’t fixed it. This doesn’t happen with Windows and Linux where fixes are always being pushed out. Some arsehole releases a zero day on Windows, you’ll get a patch in a few days. Those OS are doing things like shifting to Rust in development because it’s less prone to the sort of risks of C++.
Software like Windows, SQL Server, .net, IIS (Microsoft’s web server) are rock solid. I’ve worked for banks, drug testing companies, large retail companies that run on this stack.
I started out computing on an Apple][+ in 1982. Apple at that time had a wonderfully open ecosystem with hundreds of suppliers allowing you to do all sorts of things with the computer. In 1984, the Macintosh came along and they closed it all up. This ceded the market to some little upstart IBM computer.
At this point Apple became a niche player. They make a nice profit margin in their walled garden, but they are only a niche player. For those complaining about Apple’s app store rakeoff, why are you still there if you are not making a profit?
AndyT, do yourself a favour, read Sowell’s Basic Economics and learn about the rise and fall of Sears and JC Penney: what they supplanted, why, and why they declined.
No-one expected Microsoft’s stranglehold to be destroyed by a bloody phone, did they? Everyone was jumping up and down about Linux (still any day now, eh?). The Android/iOS duopoly will succumb to attack from an entirely unexpected vector. Perhaps one of the Channel Sailors is an entrepreneurial visionary in the Jobs mould. Who knows.
Meanwhile, you can exit Apple’s walled garden if you’re happy not to have your sprawling photos, videos, music, email, contacts, calendars etc. in a garden, but instead have it cluttering up your flat where you can’t take it with you when you go out. In fact it’s not a walled garden at all; it’s more like a park. Gardens are expensive. If you want to walk in a park it’s going to belong to someone else.
“The Android/iOS duopoly won’t last, because it can’t.”
It’ll last for a long time, because roughly speaking, there are only ever 2 or 3 platforms in a particular tech space. Whether it’s games consoles, phone OS, desktop OS, web servers, database engines there are network effects. Everyone is going to make peripherals, software, or train to support where the money is.
You create a new operating system, you’re going to have 1% of the market early on. How much dosh is someone writing an app going to make?
And what’s wrong with Android? Or even, what’s going to be better? The EU are years behind on the current situation talking about app stores because more and more phone functionality is done through the browser anyway. Developing for the Android app store costs £30 to join. You can use any computer to build an app. If you’re a small developer, 30% commission works much better than running your own store. But hey, you want to do that, you can. No-one does except for porn games.
And I cannot understand why the EU wants Apple to allow people to use their stuff. What do people run on a Mac? It’s Office, Photoshop and browsing, essentially. And you can do all that with Windows. A cheap droid does the same things as a fruity phone and no-one is going to nick it in London.
“You do know that the point of a monopoly is prices can go up and quality can go down? Go and look what AirBNB has done to the short term rentals market – it’s fucked.”
I have to acknowledge that I don’t know enough about the UK short term rentals market but in general this is a market that AirBNB created and was fucked by regulatory interventions.
“Many small businesses in the UK find they can’t actually sell their own products cheaper than Amazon does because of the service costs involved with online selling.”
Are you saying that Amazon is a monopolist that has high prices and/or low quality because they have low prices and high quality?
“We can actually still build things at competitive rates in Europe, but can’t then sell them because someone else has control of the market entrance points.”
Amazon and the american paymen providers are very happy to let you sell them! If they weren’t then you couldn’t claim that they had a monopoly
“That’s a surreal argument: “It’s not a monopoly because the people who have the monopoly pay to maintain the monopoly”… really?”
It’s not surreal, it shows that they have dynamic competitive pressure as they know that someone else will come in and take share from them unless they continue to provide what customers want. That’s the difference between Amazon (which is great for consumers because it knows that the moment it let’s its guard down it will be eaten by competition) and the Post Office Telecommunications that provided awful quality because no one was allowed to compete with it. You may disagree with the argument but it’s certainly not surreal (Microsoft won appeals against the US government using essentially this argument)
@ Norman
The Android/iOS duopoly won’t last, because it can’t
The was a time when Windows phones were challenging that duopoly. I had a couple, and really liked them. They performed better than a much higher priced Android and were very intuitive to use. The problem was their market share was less so third party developer effort went to support apps on the other platforms first. Lack of apps resulted in less users and it rapidly spiralled down.
Lack of Apps could make the duopoly last a long time.
Along with the EU our resident Dave Spart also ignores the consumer surplus that Android/iOS has created. Almost everyone on the planet now walks around with an easy-to-use handheld computing device that was unavailable to anyone at all, including the world’s richest, fewer than 20 years ago. Channel Sailors are handed them for nothing, like Smarties.
This handheld device has enabled access to and exchange of news, information, entertainment and utility at essentially negligible cost and has and profound, world-changing effects. There wouldn’t be a lot of Channel Sailing without TikTok, which costs zilch, and most of what’s on TikTok is user-generated. That’s genuinely democratising, if you want to put it that way.
This consumer surplus is probably incalculable. It’s certainly orders of magnitude greater than the profits made by the supplier corporations and even their combined market cap. Somalia only continues to exist without a government because it’s run by elders on WhatsApp groups.
So yeah, let’s kick it all down because filthy Trumpist American capitalists.
Are you saying that Amazon is a monopolist that has high prices and/or low quality because they have low prices and high quality?
True story: I worked with a company that had a new tech product. The only place they could realistically sell it was through Amazon – so they did. They had to swallow a bunch of fees, commit to certain numbers to get the shipping covered, jump through a few hoops, but eventually got it in the market place. It was a long slog, but you expect that for new tech.
Within a month Amazon had launched their ‘own brand’ version of the product – not as good, but 20% cheaper and mysteriously always at the top of searches. Overnight their sales were wiped out. It bankrupt the company.
Then a few months later, Amazon put the price of their shitty version of the product up to higher than they had been charging.
So yes, Amazon can both price you out of the market as a seller, and take high prices from the buyers at the same time, whilst delivering shittier products. But it’s not a monopolist because mumble mumble mumble…
“Apple are actually one of the worst companies for security, because most of their customers aren’t that bothered. It’s not like Windows or Linux where there are giant, valuable databases that run on their servers and you absolutely 100% do not want someone being able to get privilege escalation or to be able to dump a message to the webserver that causes a buffer overflow and corrupts data. It’s people doing a bit of art or viewing Facebook.
There are security bugs in things like Safari and Mail that have ended up released in the wild because 3 months after someone reported it to Apple, they hadn’t fixed it. This doesn’t happen with Windows and Linux where fixes are always being pushed out. Some arsehole releases a zero day on Windows, you’ll get a patch in a few days. Those OS are doing things like shifting to Rust in development because it’s less prone to the sort of risks of C++.
Software like Windows, SQL Server, .net, IIS (Microsoft’s web server) are rock solid. I’ve worked for banks, drug testing companies, large retail companies that run on this stack.”
Respect your opinion, but equally I’ve worked in technology for 30+ years and never found Apple to be an issue security wise. Windows, on the other hand, has over a long time period been an absolutely bloody nightmare. I’ve never seen a Mac compromised without a heck of a lot user carelessness or a really persistent hacker. Linux (and the Unixes) is the same in competent hands. Windows, both on the desktop and server IMHO need very diligent patching regimes and some next generation firewalls to protect them. The lengths I see my clients go to in their SOE’s to lock down every last thing on Windows machines blows my mind.
SQL Server these days is pretty solid, I would agree there, but the bad old days of IIS gave me scars that still haven’t gone away. There’s a reason that Nginx and Apache dominate the web server space.
Quite. So the 1st rule for any British or european courier company that wants to take on the yanks has to be “don’t be shit”. Being better than UPS (pronounced “Oops!”) isn’t a high bar to clear.
And not being shit applies to all the other areas too. Including governments.
I forgot Parcelfarce earlier too. Another non-yank-owned courier that fails the “don’t be shit” test.
@ Bathroom Moose
Most people in the UK will take cash (unless it is too voluminous or heavy to take away). The anti-money-laundering cut-off is generally higher value than the amount that you want to carry around (unless you’re similar size and strength as Tyson Fury).
The last several times that I have been told “we don’t take cash” were car parking charges.
So yeah, let’s kick it all down because filthy Trumpist American capitalists.
Uh? It never ceases to amaze me how people think their personal obsession is under attack when someone else just points out we could be doing better. These problems are bugger all to do with Trump – though I appreciate that his unpredictable nature has caused a few squeaky bums in Europe.
No-one here is arguing that mobile phones haven’t been a massive benefit – that’s just a nonsense strawman that you keep repeating. Duh, we know.
And personally, I’m not arguing that the EU’s approach is a particularly good one – but the current UK approach of “la la la, let’s pretend this isn’t a problem” is possibly much worse.
Not even the most ardent free-market evangelist (and believe me, I’m one of them) would argue that a broken market should be sustained. And this is a broken market, just as the market that’s let Boeing to it’s current shitty state is broken. We need competition, and we need healthy competition – but this is not it.
And we should absolutely be critical of a situation where the incumbents are hampering competition – nothing to do with capitalism, everything to do with wanting more, better, cheaper NOW.
Or are we seriously in a place where you’d defend outright corruption because it might be a criticism of the American Way? That’s pretty desperate.
Within a month Amazon had launched their ‘own brand’ version of the product – not as good, but 20% cheaper and mysteriously always at the top of searches
Oligopolistic predatory behaviour has been going on since Pontius was a pilot. Try pitching ideas to publishers or submitting treatments to ad agencies, then watching your ideas knocked out by other writers or shot by other photographers of a more favoured demographic.
Better luck next time.
It’s not surreal, it shows that they have dynamic competitive pressure as they know that someone else will come in and take share from them unless they continue to provide what customers want.
I’ve not read something so naïve in years. These guys have no competitive pressure whatsoever – certainly not to “provide what customers want”.
Go search for a holiday… the results you get are absolutely fuck all to do with giving you the best holiday, or the cheapest. They are totally determined by who paid Google the most. It really is that simple. Like supermarkets, 95% of customers will ultimately buy from the first two or three options presented to them – there is next to zero price comparison, very little concern for best quality – it’s simply the first result.
And when it comes to apps in the App store, or music on your phone… guess what? Two companies dictate what you see, and two companies take up to 30% of the profit. Their only competitive pressure is to try and make sure you buy a paid app (either paid by you or sponsored by the company providing it) rather than a free one that does the job better.
Try finding an app to track your health (I just did) – first three results are sponsored, paid apps, followed by apps from Google and Samsung. And these are apps that are so basic that you could (and I have) write a free one in a couple of weeks. There’s not a competitive fart in the room – you’re being handed slop and told to like it.
It’s like watching boiled frogs argue that the water’s fine actually, can’t see what the fuss is all about.
Despite the empirical fact that market-based competition leading to transactional co-operation is the best way to do things it’s evident in every aspect of human behaviour that almost everyone’s first priority is to shield themselves from competition, probably instinctively, because for all other species, losing and failure mean death, and our self-awareness means we know this.
So people shin up the greasy pole. They build corporations, castles with keeps, and raise the drawbridge. They predate, as Tim found with his Indian “mechanic”, India having one of the world’s most predatory cultures.
What do you do? Promote cultures that recognise the benefits of the market model plus a safety net for abject failure. We’ve not been too bad at that. Then you need recourse to cheap arbitration and effective sanctions for predators. We’ve not been particularly good at that, and are getting worse. This is the really corrosive consequence of the self-interest and politicisation of the law and judiciary.
Oligopolistic predatory behaviour has been going on since Pontius was a pilot. Try pitching ideas to publishers or submitting treatments to ad agencies, then watching your ideas knocked out by other writers or shot by other photographers of a more favoured demographic.
You are a miserable soul, aren’t you?
“Officer, officer, I’ve just been mugged”
“So what? Mugging have been happening for ever..”
Note this is not some great belief in the rule of law, or fairness or any other bollocks – it’s simply knowing you’re being mugged and not wanting it to happen again.
“I’ve not read something so naïve in years. These guys have no competitive pressure whatsoever – certainly not to “provide what customers want”.”
That is not correct. Apple and Amazon spend bns every year on developing new products and (especially in Amazon’s case, new small innovations in the customer journey. Amazon is also really good on customer service and dealing with complaints. The reason people I buy from Amazon is because they give me (a.k.a. a customer) what I want in terms of availability/assortment, speed of delivery, customer service and price.
“Go search for a holiday… the results you get are absolutely fuck all to do with giving you the best holiday, or the cheapest. They are totally determined by who paid Google the most. It really is that simple. Like supermarkets, 95% of customers will ultimately buy from the first two or three options presented to them – there is next to zero price comparison, very little concern for best quality – it’s simply the first result.”
Quality is entirely subjective and “speed/ease of finding what I want” can absolutely be a quality metric. It may not be the quality metric you like which is fine but then you should use some other means of finding it instead of not allowing the rest of us to benefit from it.
Essentially your argument boils down to: I don’t like that consumers like big american companies that I don’t like.
Apple and Amazon spend bns every year on developing new products
If you think that’s to be competitive, you’re mad. Apple know full well their customers are almost all on a perpetual upgrade cycle. They develop “new” products to sell you essentially the same phone all over again each year. Again, nothing to do with competition, everything to do with milking the customer.
Essentially your argument boils down to: I don’t like that consumers like big american companies that I don’t like.
Couldn’t be wider of the mark. I hate to break it to you – I work for these guys. I like them – they pay me well, put my kids through college. When I say they’re shafting you, it’s because I’m the guy who’s doing it. It’s not like it’s some big secret or conspiracy theory. The industry as a whole has moved from the rapid innovation of the early 2010’s to a defensive moat model. You don’t have to be competitive when you’re this big, just check the moat doesn’t leak. Most of our work is just making sure we move the customer to the most profitable choice with the minimum cost.
Honestly, if you’re not aware of this, you’ve not been paying attention. Go and read up on the changes to Google Search – there is nothing to benefit the user in that, and hasn’t been for nearly a decade.
AndyT – that’s a lot of words to say you think the EU will be able to successfully regulate its way to a healthier economy.
But what will you do when it fails?
Go and read up on the changes to Google Search – there is nothing to benefit the user in that, and hasn’t been for nearly a decade.
Why read? Just try using it. Google Search is dead, it’s only marginally useful for looking up the URLs of Facebook and other big sites now. They nerfed Image search to the point it’s unusable, and text search yields a forest of garbage.
People used to boast about “Google Fu” when that was a useful skill circa 2005. Nobody uses that term anymore, because Google Search is no longer a useful tool.
Anyway, if I was in the EU I’d worry less about Apple, and more about having 24/7 uninterrupted access to electricity in the near future. Priorities, no? This is like their equally delusional plans to “compete” with Starlink by lofting a couple of orders of magnitude fewer satellites. It’s not only not going to work, the plan was already a failure by the time they committed it to paper to the point it’s almost tedious to note the many ways in which it conflicts with commercial and physical reality.
The Americans innovate
The Chinese emulate
The EU regulates
“Why do we keep losing? Look at all the regulations we’ve passed!” – those lovable losers of the EU
Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is?
You are a miserable soul, aren’t you?
Nope, I’ve simply learned to avoid predation. I’m not always successful but no longer walk straight into it.
Norman – Nope, I’ve simply learned to avoid predation. I’m not always successful but no longer walk straight into it.
I’ve been married a couple of times too. They say the first 40 years are the hardest.
AndyT – that’s a lot of words to say you think the EU will be able to successfully regulate its way to a healthier economy.
Jumping in with both feet as usual, Steve? Absolutely the opposite of what I’m saying. They (and we in the UK) have a big problem. Their “solution” is crap. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.
Andy – Jumping in with both feet as usual, Steve?
It’s how I live my life, mate. Just Leeroy Jenkins your way through, and most people will assume you’re going somewhere. Sir Harry Paget Flashman is the archetype we should aspire to.
Absolutely the opposite of what I’m saying. They (and we in the UK) have a big problem. Their “solution” is crap. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.
Got 99 problems but cheaper 3rd party iPhone headsets ain’t one.
The problem you identified:
It’s fair to argue the EU is crap at handling this, but it is a genuine problem (and the UK is in complete denial). If you booked a holiday in the last year it was almost certainly through an American company, paid via an American payment provider. Booked a hire car – American company. Sent a parcel – American company. It’s a long list and the problem here is not that there aren’t cheaper local alternatives (there are) it’s that you almost certainly won’t find them through your phone or web browser. I’ve worked for these companies and we spend billions making sure you don’t see anything that isn’t one of the big providers.
Hmm, last time I booked a holiday I bought flights through Expedia. I’m not that bothered about Expedia making a small cut of my BA ticket, given that it was cheaper than buying direct from BA.
Last time I sent a parcel it was Royal Mail.
Last time the business hired a car for me it was a US firm’s UK subsidiary and a Japanese car.
I disagree with your assertion that there are cheaper local alternatives and also your assertion that this is all down to SEO. Also that any of the above is a problem. It’s just normal business activity, and you’d expect there to be big American firms in the mix, because they don’t have an EU to regulate them out of competitiveness.
re the Android-and-iOS-Duopoly, I don’t think it’s really fair to call it a “duopoly”. Yes obviously Apple/iCloud/iProduct/iOS is a single player controlling the whole stack, but Android is not a single product.
The definitive, “official” Android is probably Google’s Android-plus-Google-Play-services-that-uses-Google’s-Cloud, and as well as Pixel there are OEMs that ship a basically-Android phone, but the biggest seller of “Android” phones is Samsung, and Samsung includes their own app store, cloud, voice assistant, and makes a bunch of accessories that just work better with a Samsung phone.
Then there’s Amazon and Fire, which is kind-of-like-Android, but without any Google in it, and using Amazon’s cloud and voice instead of Samsung or Google’s
And then there’s Epic Game Store, a third-party app store that the end-user can just put on their phone.
I’ve probably missed a bunch more, but the point is that there isn’t one “Android”, there’s a whole bunch of Android-like products that are broadly compatible with each other but very much in competition, and alongside Apple/iOS they comprise a pretty healthy market.
Last time I …
Great anecdotes.
I disagree with your assertion that there are cheaper local alternatives and also your assertion that this is all down to SEO.
If you’re not paying the Amazon tax (or the AirBNB tax, or the Uber tax… ) then yes, things can often be cheaper.
But this isn’t really about SEO, this is about who controls online services. It sure as hell isn’t anyone in the UK.
The wider point is that this is all looking increasingly like 2008 where everyone is declaring that the magic money is endless, and that there’s definitely no systemic risk. Meanwhile, a few people have done the maths on what happens to Europe if America hits a bump in the road… and they’re pulling the same faces we saw seventeen years ago.
Online Services are controlled by the Global Establishment, no matter who nominally owns them. They’ve become global infrastructure. This is why the fool Yvette Cooper’s attempt to bully Apple will fail. She’s forgotten that her whole Westminster cabal relies on WhatsApp and its encryption to shield their plotting from the Opposition.
But that’s a Humanities grad for you.
“The Android/iOS duopoly won’t last, because it can’t.”
It’ll exist for a long time.
iOS, because it’s integral part of what runs the stuff the FruitTards want, because Bling. As long as that lasts, iOS will remain.
Android because it’s simply Linux, applied to specific hardware.
My chinese brick runs on ColorOS, which is itself a derivative of Android. Other phones have their own specific flavour, none of them run stock Android, they actually can’t.
As long as stock Android is maintained, and manufacturers can adapt it to their hardware it’ll be everywhere.
Because like Windows on PC, Android on phones fits the general hardware platform. and adresses the “universal” protocols involved. Only needs a bit of tweaking to make specialist/proprietary hardware work, because in the end you have,/b> to pipe your results through the Commons of Android.
Building something entirely new that still can talk to everything else it needs is ….economically unsound. And would in the end have to sort-of look the same, because Users are used to that look.
It simply isn’t interesting. So people don’t, and focus expensive development time on making sure hardware works within the current framework.
And even that is limited, because we’ve basically hit Peak Mobile when it comes to hardware.
You’d need some drastic new developments in the way we do Digital Stuff before Android is shaken up.
Whups, tags..
Norman, The Pixie is just a mouthpiece, like all the other Home Secretaries since forever. The Home Office is the definition of dysfunctional government and captures it’s Minister PDQ when they change. We need Trump over here to sort it out, neither the Tories nor Nigel have the guts or the clout to do so.
That’s essentially my point. Apart from Windows, computing devices that ordinary people use are all based on UNIX so you could call it a monopoly. iOS is one proprietary, hardware-integrated flavour, Samsung’s phones run another, Google’s another; no doubt Kim Jong Un’s run yet another. His computers do.
They will all come and go. Nothing lasts forever. Sears was a catalogue mail-order company that was superseded by JC Penney. All have been superseded by Amazon, an email-order company. The function is basically the same: browse pictures and descriptions of stuff, make an order, a bloke delivers it to your door at some point. Whither Littlewoods?
The EU doesn’t even wonder why Europe’s top 50 corporations are all smaller than Home Depot;)
That is the result they’ve been working towards. You have to wonder if this isn’t all a memetic attack by China – get the West to tear itself apart by paying people to take up destructive memes.