>It said that rules under the act affected the way it provided users access to apps. “Pornography apps are available on iPhone from other marketplaces – apps we’ve never allowed on the App Store because of the risks they create, especially for children,” it said.
Oh the children card! Too bad you do ship such an app with your device since forever, it's called a Browser!
If there weren't, it wouldn't still be such a widely-used and effective tactic for getting people to shut off their brains and do whatever the person saying it wants.
I'm all for playing the "oh, the children!" card. As a parent it's nice to not have to worry about that sort of thing.
It does ring hollow when the Screen Time controls that Apple includes is such a muddled mess. And, sometimes, it just doesn't seem to work properly at all. Working properly, the browser bypass isn't really a problem, but it's very twitchy and fiddly to set up.
If you enabled parental controls, then unrated apps from outside the App Store are already blocked by default. The DMA creates no additional risk here.
> Among the requirements of the DMA is that Apple ensures that headphones made by other brands will work with iPhones. It said this has been a block on it releasing its live translation service in the EU as it allows rival companies to access data from conversations, creating a privacy problem.
This sounds bogus right? If all the headphones can do is transmit audio via first party operating system features how is this creating a data privacy issue? How are headphones going to exfiltrate data unless they have their own Wi-Fi connection or application that can serve as a bridge? Just disallow both.
It is somewhat complicated by the specific requirements of the DMA specifications for Apple:
> The interoperability solutions for third parties will have to be equally effective to those available to Apple and must not require more cumbersome system settings or additional user friction. All features on Apple will have to make available to third parties any new functionalities of the listed features once they become available to Apple.
Apple is saying, "We designed our API in a way that requires trusted headphones as part of the privacy model, and DMA would force us to give everyone access to that API."
What goes unstated is that trusted headphones aren't necessary for the feature and a company trying to meaningfully comply with the spirit of the DMA probably would have chosen to implement the API differently.
And “trusted headphones” - all headphones, including AirPods, are untrusted until paired. This entire narrative that Apple is pushing is political, not technical.
Those are fair questions. This is what Apple says in the press release:
> Live Translation with AirPods uses Apple Intelligence to let Apple users communicate across languages. Bringing a sophisticated feature like this to other devices creates challenges that take time to solve. For example, we designed Live Translation so that our users’ conversations stay private — they’re processed on device and are never accessible to Apple — and our teams are doing additional engineering work to make sure they won’t be exposed to other companies or developers either.
We know it isn't necessary because Apple believes it is possible and are working on it. That's a pretty good indication that Airpods and their associated stack are currently being treated differently for a feature which fundamentally boils down to streaming audio to and from the headphones. It's not even clear how 'securing' live translated audio is any different from 'securing' a FaceTime call in your native language. I think a reasonable reading sans more technical information from Apple is that they give Airpods more data and control over the device than is necessary, and they want us to be mad at the DMA for forcing them to fix it.
Agreed. There is no sane reason why live translation and/or its privacy properties should depend on the specific headphones used. Even if the live translation were to happen in the headphones themselves, that should only tie the availability of the feature to the headphones. The privacy implications ought to be orthogonal.
I see three possibilities. Either the whole thing is made up entirely by Apple for bad faith reasons. Or some non-technical person with bad faith motivations at Apple suffered from some internal misunderstanding. Or somebody at Apple made some incredibly bad technical decisions.
Basically, there's no way that this isn't a screw up by somebody at Apple in some form. We just can't say which it is without additional information.
It sounds like a straight up lie. Third party apps have always been able to record from microphones, and the live translation doesn't work without a connection to its app. They're just annoyed that they have to share their private APIs that let them do it without the normal restrictions for apps.
> Third party apps have always been able to record from microphones
Maybe not the way Apple is doing it is my guess. Apple can bypass security concerns for Apple itself since they know they aren't doing anything malicious.
I love Apple and would love better integration with other headsets, but I have a feeling none of us have the full picture.
Because the DMA legally obligates them to share those APIs when they are necessary to implement a feature for a connected device. The goal of the regulation is to promote healthy competition for connected devices by outlawing self-preferencing by massive players. Reasonable people can disagree about the goals or the downstream effects of the DMA, but creating Private APIs for connected device features absolutely falls under the umbrella of self-preferencing.
In the same way, the EU could ask manufacturers of wireless headphones to open up and homologise their proprietary “APIs” with which they communicate with the other earpiece so you can mix&match single earpieces from different manufacturers.
The point of this regulation (DMA) is to enable more competition in important market segments. If this exact thing becames somehow very important, sure, it's possible, otherwise it's a bit contrived. What's the point?
Let's flip this. It's the user's device, providing the user's data to the user's headphones, via an app the user has chosen, that was written by a developer vetted by Apple, who's already reviewed and approved the code that will be running. And it's the law that they have to.
Because the user's device, providing the user's data to the user's Meta headphones, via a Meta app, can then record all the time and exfiltrate all that recorded data to Meta.
Or whatever other shady company wants to make headphones that sell for dirt-cheap in order to get their private spy devices into people's homes and offices.
I'm personally a bit on the fence about whether I think this is a sufficient concern to justify what Apple's doing, but AIUI this is the gist of their objection.
If it violates Apple's views on acceptable privacy practices, why are they approving the app? They already have guidelines against identifying information or collecting more data than absolutely required. The developer data use page is quite frank about the expectations:
Apps on the app store are held to a high standard for privacy, security, and content because nothing is more important than maintaining users' trust.
This is a rhetorical question, obviously. Apple is happy to stand on principle when it benefits them, and more than willing to soften or bend those principles when it'd be too difficult.
If a particular app only demonstrates this undesirable behavior when the phone is paired with a particular subset of headphones (or other hardware), then Apple may never notice it in App Review.
Because (since they control the platform/market) they're giving themselves an unfair advantage over competitors.
Example: iCloud photos backup can upload a photo to iCloud in the background immediately after it was taken. Competing cloud storage providers cannot do this[1], because Apple withholds the API for that. Of course they're saying this is for "privacy" or for "energy saving" or whatever, but the actual reason is of course to make the user experience with competing services deliberately worse, so that people choose iCloud over something else.
[1] There is some weird tricks with notifications and location triggers that apps like Nextcloud or Immich go through to make this work at least somewhat but those are hacks and it's also not reliable.
> Competing cloud storage providers cannot do this[1], because Apple withholds the API for that. Of course they're saying this is for "privacy" or for "energy saving" or whatever, but the actual reason is of course to make the user experience with competing services deliberately worse, so that people choose iCloud over something else.
Which makes Google Photos so much more impressive because it's heads above iCloud in this regard. No idea how they do that, pure magic.
I read this thinking about how movie studios tried to have a fully encrypted chain between the TV, the cable, the graphics card, all the way down so that HDCP would prevent anybody from putting something in the middle to record movies onto.
I don't think it's beyond the pale to argue that some shady headphone company could throw a cell modem into a set of over-the-ear headphones to exfiltrate audio. I just can't see the business case for it, even considering shadier business cases.
> This sounds bogus right? If all the headphones can do is transmit audio via first party operating system features how is this creating a data privacy issue?
Wait until third parties "require" an app to be installed, and the headphones send audio as data to the app instead of calling itself a microphone, and the app then sends that data to wherever you don't want it to.
Bose, for example, "requires" an app to be installed. For "updates", they tell you. Updates... to headphones...?!
> Bose, for example, "requires" an app to be installed. For "updates", they tell you. Updates... to headphones...?!
The headphones work without the app, but the app is required for updates (the headphones have onboard software) and also if you want to manage the multipoint connection capability from your phone (which can be more convenient than doing it from the headphones and each device you want to connect to, but is not necessary to use the feature.)
Yes this is a thing. I.e. I have Samgung Buds and first thing my Samsung phone did was to load new firmware into them, probably for active noise protection
Stop the FUD with those quotes. Bose does not require or "require" an app to be installed to use their headphones and I'm not sure any vendor of BT headphones does; feel free to share if that's not the case...
I do not install vendor apps for BT peripherals, and have been through the QC and 700 series of headphones without using their app. Same for Google and Samsung BT earbuds.
Can you install an app and get updates for bugs or changes to equalizer, noise cancellation, or other features (wanted or unwantes)? Yes, but it is not required nor "required", whatever that means.
> Stop the FUD with those quotes. Bose does not require or "require" an app to be installed to use their headphones and I'm not sure any vendor of BT headphones does
Is it FUD? It's fear, for sure. Uncertainly maybe. Doubt, not really.
An app that doesn't do that today is an app that could do that after an update tomorrow.
As for firmware... well the fact that something that just processes audio needs a firmware update demonstrates that the company isn't doing proper engineering. Proper engineering processes would be able to resolve just about anything with firmware before it gets released. Yes there "might" be bugs. No, those bugs shouldn't be severe. And regardless of proper engineering, a firmware that doesn't send telemetry back today is a firmware that could send telemetry after an update tomorrow.
So it is FUD? No. It's awareness of what's possible.
> “The DMA means the list of delayed features in the EU will probably get longer, and our EU users’ experience on Apple products will fall further behind,”
That's an Apple problem, they're the ones going to lose market share to competitors offering those experiences.
Samsung already has live translation, including in calls.
In any case, I find it interesting that Palantir and Thorn are much better at lobbying the EU against its interests than Apple and other companies on much smaller and less relevant issues.
My anecdata is, I live in EU and have their Phone, Pad and Watch.
Right now I’m not bothered by whatever “features” that are already delayed, but if the list gets larger, and their competitors find a way of not delaying them (I think they will), I’ll simply jump ship the next time I upgrade and that’s that.
As a consumer I can’t care less about Apple’s woes around DMA.
Apple has massive NIH issues. Not just with engineering etc but also their marketing and I wouldn’t be surprised if it extents to their legal/lobbying departments as well.
Apple used to partner with some of the best external ad agencies and released some of the most memorable campaigns ever. But sometime over a decade ago they switched to doing it primarily in house and we haven’t seen a memorable ad campaign since forever.
I suspect they similarly are driving their EU lobbying/legal decisions from California but the EU system is completely different from the U.S. system.
It’s been quite evident, even from the outside looking in, that Apple keeps making arguments and keeps getting surprised by decisions that should be obvious to anyone who has even the slightest inkling of how the EU operates.
To play devil’s advocate a little bit, being required to make every new API publicly available right away can be a real pain in the rear for the first several iterations of these APIs, for both first and third parties.
A common pattern in Apple platforms has been for APIs to be private initially, then made public 2-4 major versions after introduction, once the bulk of the design churn is over with and it can remain relatively stable. Essentially, they focus on making it functional and shaped correctly and then make it public once they’re satisfied. They don’t do this with every API obviously, but have with several.
I think the DMA would be stronger if it had a “beta clause” that allowed that form of development for some stretch of time (a couple of years maybe) after public release before requirements kick in. This way companies don’t have to try to juggle making the APIs functional vs. fit for public consumption.
Now, Apple shipping an API has never been a guarantee they'll keep it compatible for any specific length of time, they've kept some APIs half broken without much afterthought as well. Versioning APIs wouldn't be some incredible techbical burden either.
At the size and position of Apple they sure can do it.
The requirement for making APIs immediately public only applies to connected devices under specific circumstances, which I would expect are a little more solidified at launch on account of how much integration work has to happen between different groups at Apple. AFAICT other APIs can remain private indefinitely unless they are subject to an interoperability request. Assuming the request is valid, Apple has 9-21 months to plan and implement any necessary changes to make the API public, where the time range is based on a self-assessment of the technical complexity of the request.
> A common pattern in Apple platforms has been for APIs to be private initially, then made public 2-4 major versions after introduction, once the bulk of the design churn is over with and it can remain relatively stable.
I think DMA is what it is partly because Apple has stopped doing that for signifiant chunks of functionality, and started removing features available to third-party developers. See "Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones" https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
> delayed features are leading to a worse experience for users
If they want to play fast and loose with the lack of consumer protections in the US market, by all means! Delayed features actually lead to a BETTER experience over here in the EU.
Yup. People complain about bundled bullshit with Windows. You basically don't get most of it and you get to uninstall all bundled apps including Edge. This is a direct result of DMA.
This reminds me that recently I was trying to find any and all headsets that implement well into the Apple Ecosystem, then I remembered that Apple owns Beats, while I dont usually care about Beats, I wanted over the head headphones that were not an arm and a leg, only one out of all their headsets going on years now has some support, and it was really confusing figuring out if its even the latest ones. This is a product wholly owned by Apple and even that doesn't get access to Apple's Bluetooth magic? Wild.
I'm not spending the cost of an entry level Mac (nearly) on headphones, that's just insane to me. An entry level Macbook Air is $50 more. That is wild to me. I've never spent that much on Headphones, and if it aint a DAC headset, I just can't justify it.
I do wonder, how much of what Apple is doing is proprietary, and patented? Or is the fear that Apple could not patent it, and competitors will realize they could do the same for other ecosystems?
Ah, an excellent example of the trade-offs we face. The plastics in your Beats-branded device are made from petrochemicals freshly brought to the surface of the earth and will be sent to a landfill for ever and ever after you are done with them, while the metal in the Apple-branded device was recycled before and will be recycled again.
Does it sync automatically? It was really confusing googling for this stuff. I love my Airpod Pros but the mic is dead on them. I hate having to switch back and forth from bluetooth to wired.
Apple calls for changes to anti-monopoly laws and says it may stop shipping to the EU
If that happens, then the demand is big enough that companies would import millions of iPhones from other regions and sell them in the EU.
For warranty service, the company would ship the phones back to the original country where Apple sold them.
Then, if that causes Apple too much trouble, then Apple would have to detect that the phone had been spending most of the time in the EU, and refuse to provide free servicing under warranty.
They threatened to & then followed through turning off Advanced Data Protection in the UK and removed the features, pointing to the pending laws in that region.
Apple does not seem to have a reputation for bluffing.
Apple would still sell a large number of devices, but not have to provide an extra year of EU warranty for free. Or any warranty, actually.
Tariffs also become less of Apple's problem when the phones aren't being sold via official channels. The EU is not a growing market of consideration compared to China or India.
“If DMA doesn’t change, we’ll drop some 25% of our revenue” sounds orders of magnitude bigger than “we’ll disable ADP”, which was the example given by OP.
It’s like a comparison of “I’d be mildly annoyed” vs. “I’ll burn myself alive” as far as reactions go.
Plus the EU is only like 7% of Apple's revenue, so I'm also in the camp of "I don't think they are bluffing." They'd still have UK & Norway, both of which have a higher share of iOS than other European nations.
The US & China are much bigger, more important markets for Apple.
Apple completely leaving the EU means most of their network effect is gone.
Any app targeting the EU is then required to go android first, and other markets will have a real life sample of what happens when Apple leaves, which won't be as catastrophic as Apple predicts.
Sony and Sharp won't be crying a river if Japan does the same move for instance.
> so I'm also in the camp of "I don't think they are bluffing."
How big is Russian market do you think? They didn't quit even that, and here we are pretending that Apple is going to quit EU.
> They'd still have UK & Norway, both of which have a higher share of iOS than other European nations.
UK and Norway is ~75 million people
EU is 450 million people
> The US & China are much bigger, more important markets for Apple.
So, a wealthy US market with 350 million people is very important. Unlike the wealthy EU market with 450 million people which Apple can just easily abandon.
I thought Apple would leave Brazil or China before we'd see them leave the EU, but I don't think I can think of Apple bluffing in this way before, either
What an empty threat. Apple has 1/3 of the mobile market share in Europe and people here are not locked into the ecosystem, with 3P messaging apps like WhatsApp dominating communication. And they are trying to pull this BS at a time that they are facing ever stronger competition from foldable phones and their inability to do anything useful in AI.
As far as I'm concerned, I lowkey want them to do that. Would open up space for an alternative.
As good as Apple hardware is (well in the designe department at least) their behavior is terrible for consumers and their OSs are becoming a joke.
So, it's not like we would lose something particularly great.
Everyone will have to come to Switzerland to buy their apple gear. We have the live translation feature now.
There's a few other countries in Europe where it's released but their vat is much higher. I think apple normalizes prices across countries but every now and then it's cheaper to buy apple gear here. There was even a time when iPhones were cheaper here than in the USA because of some exchange rate issues.
> Flippin' Symbian phones from early 2010's are more capable
As a person who used them then and still have a few working that I turn on now and then, this is nostalgic bunk. Symbian phone hardware & software SDK were a disorganized mess. By 2010, Symbian phones were stagnant and the market was mostly abandoned.
The Symbian OS had promise, but it was not realized. There is a reason the 2007 iPhone totally disrupted PalmPC/PalmOS/webOS/Symbian and wiped them from the landscape.
> Symbian phones from early 2010's are more capable...
I suppose there was no need to mention Symbian. It was a hellish system to develop for, and once smartphones had a little more RAM and CPU power, Symbian had absolutely no future. Nokia's answer to the iPhone was MeeGo [0], which wasn't bad, but Google's Android was, in fact, even better.
Apple's main strategy back when Cambridge analytica incident happened was that they're privacy first company. Clearly, they were not and this incident just shows they only talked the talk as long as it was convenient for them
> EU is not negotiating from a position of strength.
This is starting to become apparent in a variety of aspects of life. The past 2 or 3 decades the EU (and most of the world) has sort of ignored "might makes right" in favor of mutual respect.
However, when shit hits the fan, you need to negotiate from a strong position like you've said and the EU lacks that -- customers, supply chains, military, economic, you name it.
Yeah sure that will happen in the real world
It is of Apples most lucrative markets.
I fully understand their frustration but
I sincerely doubt that their shareholders
will accept it.
Doing it for a week, perhaps, to make a point
and see if EU caves from it, which I dont
see happening either.
Please do so, we sure won't miss you. Hope Google does the same.
Back to good ol' no tech world, this ultra connected surveillance dopamine farm thingy was just a fever dream.
This is great so long as the EU keeps its spine and doesn’t budge. Apple has behaved like a petulant child with the DMA and there’s zero chance their shareholders will willingly drop such a significant revenue %. The EU holds a lot of sway here, just don’t blink first please.
EU is about 7% of Apple's revenue. Opening up the platform and allowing interoperability may actually harm more than that, I can envision a situation where Apple would actually be better off just pulling out.
It's sad to see how poorly the U.S. has been enforcing (and interpreting) its own anti-trust legislation the last ~40 years. In my view that decline has been one of the contributing factors to the growing business oligarchy in the country.
Funnily, the previous EU commissioner for competition, who has spearheaded these clashes between EU and the U.S. tech giants has stated that the U.S. basically wrote the book on sensible anti-trust legislation back in the day, and that the EU's current laws are greatly inspired by the historical example of the U.S.
> Apple added that Brussels was creating unfair competition as the rules were not applied to Samsung, the largest smartphone provider in the EU.
This is disingenuous. The DMA gatekeeper rules apply to Android and Google Play, and Samsung's live translation feature does not appear to be tied to specific earbuds.
Pretty scary for Apple shareholders. They're basically saying that the extremely expensive hardware alone isn't enough to make a profit anymore? They're that reliant on the app store monopoly now?
They're reliant on ecosystem lock-in. An iPhone begets AirPods, Mac, iPad, Watch and Services (Apple Music, TV+, etc.).
I use and like my macbooks, but the only reason I remain on iOS is for the integration. Auto switching with airpods, continuity camera, universal control, shared clipboard, etc.
The moment that third party software & hardware can use those APIs and integrate to the same level that Apple's own tech can, Apple no longer as a unique selling point (outside of maybe Advanced Data Protection) vs. any other smartphone.
I'd love to use my macbook, an Android phone, AirPods, and a Pixel watch all together to the level of seamlessness that Apple's own ecosystem integrates.
Company that makes vast profits from its monopoly over a digital market is against legislation to stop companies from exploiting monopolies over digital markets.
> “Pornography apps are available on iPhone from other marketplaces – apps we’ve never allowed on the App Store because of the risks they create, especially for children,”
Why are they going to this now ? Nobody is holding apple responsible for that. It's just another 'think of the children' fear mongering while with the other face they want to be able to record everything without explicit consent or with some guadrails ?
Apple can adapt if they want to participate in the EU market, like others have. They seem to think that it works like their lobby groups in the US.
Just waiting for Macron to receive an expensive plaque from 'Tim Apple'.
The porn thing is unsurprising. Apple is notoriously picky about their brand image and what their devices can be used for, or seen being used for (famously, to use iPhones in movies they are not allowed to be used by villains).
Eh it's not new, Apple is pretty much the reason tumblr got rid of nsfw content (I've heard it's sort of back now but idk I'm never going back to tumblr).
It's why even if an app in the app store is rated 17+ it still can't really have nudity in it.
Then why Reddit and Twitter continue to have NSFW? Why I can open Safari and see porn if I want to? Should not be that removed from AppStore and iOS as well?
That’s rich. They do malicious compliance until they’re blue in the face and then blame the EU for it. Not even that tired “think of the children” shtick is too low for them. Pfui.
Timezones. The US lobby has barely started their work day. In any case it's a bit premature to make conclusions on overall community sentiment an hour in.
>It said that rules under the act affected the way it provided users access to apps. “Pornography apps are available on iPhone from other marketplaces – apps we’ve never allowed on the App Store because of the risks they create, especially for children,” it said.
Oh the children card! Too bad you do ship such an app with your device since forever, it's called a Browser!
Are there people around who still believe the narrative and gives the benefit of the doubt to whoever says that it is for the children? Crazy.
Yes of course, it's clearly extremely effective and is the go to excuse for restricting your rights across the world.
If there weren't, it wouldn't still be such a widely-used and effective tactic for getting people to shut off their brains and do whatever the person saying it wants.
No; they just want to have cover for the real reason they don't like these apps: because it goes against their duplicitous religious morality.
Yes, but it's not Apple who is driven by the nonsense religious morality
There's no morality. They'd sell porn in a minute if they thought it would be a net help to the bottom line.
I'm all for playing the "oh, the children!" card. As a parent it's nice to not have to worry about that sort of thing.
It does ring hollow when the Screen Time controls that Apple includes is such a muddled mess. And, sometimes, it just doesn't seem to work properly at all. Working properly, the browser bypass isn't really a problem, but it's very twitchy and fiddly to set up.
If you enabled parental controls, then unrated apps from outside the App Store are already blocked by default. The DMA creates no additional risk here.
And if you could actually be the device administrator, you could set rules however you want instead of being on the same user level as the child.
A browser, gacha-esque games with microtransactions to get kids addicted and spending, gambling and betting apps...
Think of the children though, they can't see boobs.
Back in my day we had to go out to the forest to see boobs...
While some just had to look in the mirror!
>Think of the children though, they can't see boobs.
And now for a word from our sponsor, Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (JMÉL)...
> Among the requirements of the DMA is that Apple ensures that headphones made by other brands will work with iPhones. It said this has been a block on it releasing its live translation service in the EU as it allows rival companies to access data from conversations, creating a privacy problem.
This sounds bogus right? If all the headphones can do is transmit audio via first party operating system features how is this creating a data privacy issue? How are headphones going to exfiltrate data unless they have their own Wi-Fi connection or application that can serve as a bridge? Just disallow both.
It is somewhat complicated by the specific requirements of the DMA specifications for Apple:
> The interoperability solutions for third parties will have to be equally effective to those available to Apple and must not require more cumbersome system settings or additional user friction. All features on Apple will have to make available to third parties any new functionalities of the listed features once they become available to Apple.
Apple is saying, "We designed our API in a way that requires trusted headphones as part of the privacy model, and DMA would force us to give everyone access to that API."
What goes unstated is that trusted headphones aren't necessary for the feature and a company trying to meaningfully comply with the spirit of the DMA probably would have chosen to implement the API differently.
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/questions-and-answe...
And “trusted headphones” - all headphones, including AirPods, are untrusted until paired. This entire narrative that Apple is pushing is political, not technical.
Can you explain how you know that trusted headphones aren't necessary and where Apple is saying what you are quoting here?
Those are fair questions. This is what Apple says in the press release:
> Live Translation with AirPods uses Apple Intelligence to let Apple users communicate across languages. Bringing a sophisticated feature like this to other devices creates challenges that take time to solve. For example, we designed Live Translation so that our users’ conversations stay private — they’re processed on device and are never accessible to Apple — and our teams are doing additional engineering work to make sure they won’t be exposed to other companies or developers either.
We know it isn't necessary because Apple believes it is possible and are working on it. That's a pretty good indication that Airpods and their associated stack are currently being treated differently for a feature which fundamentally boils down to streaming audio to and from the headphones. It's not even clear how 'securing' live translated audio is any different from 'securing' a FaceTime call in your native language. I think a reasonable reading sans more technical information from Apple is that they give Airpods more data and control over the device than is necessary, and they want us to be mad at the DMA for forcing them to fix it.
Agreed. There is no sane reason why live translation and/or its privacy properties should depend on the specific headphones used. Even if the live translation were to happen in the headphones themselves, that should only tie the availability of the feature to the headphones. The privacy implications ought to be orthogonal.
I see three possibilities. Either the whole thing is made up entirely by Apple for bad faith reasons. Or some non-technical person with bad faith motivations at Apple suffered from some internal misunderstanding. Or somebody at Apple made some incredibly bad technical decisions.
Basically, there's no way that this isn't a screw up by somebody at Apple in some form. We just can't say which it is without additional information.
It sounds like a straight up lie. Third party apps have always been able to record from microphones, and the live translation doesn't work without a connection to its app. They're just annoyed that they have to share their private APIs that let them do it without the normal restrictions for apps.
> Third party apps have always been able to record from microphones
Maybe not the way Apple is doing it is my guess. Apple can bypass security concerns for Apple itself since they know they aren't doing anything malicious.
I love Apple and would love better integration with other headsets, but I have a feeling none of us have the full picture.
why should they have to share those private APIs?
Because the DMA legally obligates them to share those APIs when they are necessary to implement a feature for a connected device. The goal of the regulation is to promote healthy competition for connected devices by outlawing self-preferencing by massive players. Reasonable people can disagree about the goals or the downstream effects of the DMA, but creating Private APIs for connected device features absolutely falls under the umbrella of self-preferencing.
> creating Private APIs for connected device
In the same way, the EU could ask manufacturers of wireless headphones to open up and homologise their proprietary “APIs” with which they communicate with the other earpiece so you can mix&match single earpieces from different manufacturers.
Yeah, they could.
The point of this regulation (DMA) is to enable more competition in important market segments. If this exact thing becames somehow very important, sure, it's possible, otherwise it's a bit contrived. What's the point?
Let's flip this. It's the user's device, providing the user's data to the user's headphones, via an app the user has chosen, that was written by a developer vetted by Apple, who's already reviewed and approved the code that will be running. And it's the law that they have to.
Why shouldn't they share those APIs?
Because the user's device, providing the user's data to the user's Meta headphones, via a Meta app, can then record all the time and exfiltrate all that recorded data to Meta.
Or whatever other shady company wants to make headphones that sell for dirt-cheap in order to get their private spy devices into people's homes and offices.
I'm personally a bit on the fence about whether I think this is a sufficient concern to justify what Apple's doing, but AIUI this is the gist of their objection.
If it violates Apple's views on acceptable privacy practices, why are they approving the app? They already have guidelines against identifying information or collecting more data than absolutely required. The developer data use page is quite frank about the expectations:
This is a rhetorical question, obviously. Apple is happy to stand on principle when it benefits them, and more than willing to soften or bend those principles when it'd be too difficult.If a particular app only demonstrates this undesirable behavior when the phone is paired with a particular subset of headphones (or other hardware), then Apple may never notice it in App Review.
Because (since they control the platform/market) they're giving themselves an unfair advantage over competitors.
Example: iCloud photos backup can upload a photo to iCloud in the background immediately after it was taken. Competing cloud storage providers cannot do this[1], because Apple withholds the API for that. Of course they're saying this is for "privacy" or for "energy saving" or whatever, but the actual reason is of course to make the user experience with competing services deliberately worse, so that people choose iCloud over something else.
[1] There is some weird tricks with notifications and location triggers that apps like Nextcloud or Immich go through to make this work at least somewhat but those are hacks and it's also not reliable.
> Competing cloud storage providers cannot do this[1], because Apple withholds the API for that. Of course they're saying this is for "privacy" or for "energy saving" or whatever, but the actual reason is of course to make the user experience with competing services deliberately worse, so that people choose iCloud over something else.
Which makes Google Photos so much more impressive because it's heads above iCloud in this regard. No idea how they do that, pure magic.
They can chose not to share them. But then they should stop preventing other from shipping the same functionality.
So, I'm a user who's looking to buy some headphones. Why can't I buy any headphones that offer live translation functionality except Apple's?
I read this thinking about how movie studios tried to have a fully encrypted chain between the TV, the cable, the graphics card, all the way down so that HDCP would prevent anybody from putting something in the middle to record movies onto.
I don't think it's beyond the pale to argue that some shady headphone company could throw a cell modem into a set of over-the-ear headphones to exfiltrate audio. I just can't see the business case for it, even considering shadier business cases.
> This sounds bogus right? If all the headphones can do is transmit audio via first party operating system features how is this creating a data privacy issue?
Wait until third parties "require" an app to be installed, and the headphones send audio as data to the app instead of calling itself a microphone, and the app then sends that data to wherever you don't want it to.
Bose, for example, "requires" an app to be installed. For "updates", they tell you. Updates... to headphones...?!
> Bose, for example, "requires" an app to be installed. For "updates", they tell you. Updates... to headphones...?!
The headphones work without the app, but the app is required for updates (the headphones have onboard software) and also if you want to manage the multipoint connection capability from your phone (which can be more convenient than doing it from the headphones and each device you want to connect to, but is not necessary to use the feature.)
Yes this is a thing. I.e. I have Samgung Buds and first thing my Samsung phone did was to load new firmware into them, probably for active noise protection
Stop the FUD with those quotes. Bose does not require or "require" an app to be installed to use their headphones and I'm not sure any vendor of BT headphones does; feel free to share if that's not the case...
I do not install vendor apps for BT peripherals, and have been through the QC and 700 series of headphones without using their app. Same for Google and Samsung BT earbuds.
Can you install an app and get updates for bugs or changes to equalizer, noise cancellation, or other features (wanted or unwantes)? Yes, but it is not required nor "required", whatever that means.
> Stop the FUD with those quotes. Bose does not require or "require" an app to be installed to use their headphones and I'm not sure any vendor of BT headphones does
Is it FUD? It's fear, for sure. Uncertainly maybe. Doubt, not really.
An app that doesn't do that today is an app that could do that after an update tomorrow.
As for firmware... well the fact that something that just processes audio needs a firmware update demonstrates that the company isn't doing proper engineering. Proper engineering processes would be able to resolve just about anything with firmware before it gets released. Yes there "might" be bugs. No, those bugs shouldn't be severe. And regardless of proper engineering, a firmware that doesn't send telemetry back today is a firmware that could send telemetry after an update tomorrow.
So it is FUD? No. It's awareness of what's possible.
> “The DMA means the list of delayed features in the EU will probably get longer, and our EU users’ experience on Apple products will fall further behind,”
That's an Apple problem, they're the ones going to lose market share to competitors offering those experiences.
Samsung already has live translation, including in calls.
In any case, I find it interesting that Palantir and Thorn are much better at lobbying the EU against its interests than Apple and other companies on much smaller and less relevant issues.
My anecdata is, I live in EU and have their Phone, Pad and Watch.
Right now I’m not bothered by whatever “features” that are already delayed, but if the list gets larger, and their competitors find a way of not delaying them (I think they will), I’ll simply jump ship the next time I upgrade and that’s that.
As a consumer I can’t care less about Apple’s woes around DMA.
Apple has massive NIH issues. Not just with engineering etc but also their marketing and I wouldn’t be surprised if it extents to their legal/lobbying departments as well.
Apple used to partner with some of the best external ad agencies and released some of the most memorable campaigns ever. But sometime over a decade ago they switched to doing it primarily in house and we haven’t seen a memorable ad campaign since forever.
I suspect they similarly are driving their EU lobbying/legal decisions from California but the EU system is completely different from the U.S. system.
It’s been quite evident, even from the outside looking in, that Apple keeps making arguments and keeps getting surprised by decisions that should be obvious to anyone who has even the slightest inkling of how the EU operates.
To play devil’s advocate a little bit, being required to make every new API publicly available right away can be a real pain in the rear for the first several iterations of these APIs, for both first and third parties.
A common pattern in Apple platforms has been for APIs to be private initially, then made public 2-4 major versions after introduction, once the bulk of the design churn is over with and it can remain relatively stable. Essentially, they focus on making it functional and shaped correctly and then make it public once they’re satisfied. They don’t do this with every API obviously, but have with several.
I think the DMA would be stronger if it had a “beta clause” that allowed that form of development for some stretch of time (a couple of years maybe) after public release before requirements kick in. This way companies don’t have to try to juggle making the APIs functional vs. fit for public consumption.
They'd have to iterate in public for sure.
Now, Apple shipping an API has never been a guarantee they'll keep it compatible for any specific length of time, they've kept some APIs half broken without much afterthought as well. Versioning APIs wouldn't be some incredible techbical burden either.
At the size and position of Apple they sure can do it.
The requirement for making APIs immediately public only applies to connected devices under specific circumstances, which I would expect are a little more solidified at launch on account of how much integration work has to happen between different groups at Apple. AFAICT other APIs can remain private indefinitely unless they are subject to an interoperability request. Assuming the request is valid, Apple has 9-21 months to plan and implement any necessary changes to make the API public, where the time range is based on a self-assessment of the technical complexity of the request.
(See pages 87-88): https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
> A common pattern in Apple platforms has been for APIs to be private initially, then made public 2-4 major versions after introduction, once the bulk of the design churn is over with and it can remain relatively stable.
I think DMA is what it is partly because Apple has stopped doing that for signifiant chunks of functionality, and started removing features available to third-party developers. See "Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones" https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
> delayed features are leading to a worse experience for users
If they want to play fast and loose with the lack of consumer protections in the US market, by all means! Delayed features actually lead to a BETTER experience over here in the EU.
Yup. People complain about bundled bullshit with Windows. You basically don't get most of it and you get to uninstall all bundled apps including Edge. This is a direct result of DMA.
Not on Apple devices. It just leads to missing features.
That sounds like Apple's problem.
It is a lot my problem, because I actually do want those features…
I could not care less about interoperability or whatever the current trend of regulation tries to “fix,” I want the features, period.
This reminds me that recently I was trying to find any and all headsets that implement well into the Apple Ecosystem, then I remembered that Apple owns Beats, while I dont usually care about Beats, I wanted over the head headphones that were not an arm and a leg, only one out of all their headsets going on years now has some support, and it was really confusing figuring out if its even the latest ones. This is a product wholly owned by Apple and even that doesn't get access to Apple's Bluetooth magic? Wild.
I'm not spending the cost of an entry level Mac (nearly) on headphones, that's just insane to me. An entry level Macbook Air is $50 more. That is wild to me. I've never spent that much on Headphones, and if it aint a DAC headset, I just can't justify it.
I do wonder, how much of what Apple is doing is proprietary, and patented? Or is the fear that Apple could not patent it, and competitors will realize they could do the same for other ecosystems?
Beats use Apple’s Bluetooth chips. My Beats Studio headphones work great with all my Apple devices, and was much cheaper than the Max.
Not to mention they're 120g lighter than the Max, since Beats aren't subject to Apples mandate of making everything out of metal.
Ah, an excellent example of the trade-offs we face. The plastics in your Beats-branded device are made from petrochemicals freshly brought to the surface of the earth and will be sent to a landfill for ever and ever after you are done with them, while the metal in the Apple-branded device was recycled before and will be recycled again.
Take your pick
Does it sync automatically? It was really confusing googling for this stuff. I love my Airpod Pros but the mic is dead on them. I hate having to switch back and forth from bluetooth to wired.
yes
Apple calls for changes to anti-monopoly laws and says it may stop shipping to the EU
If that happens, then the demand is big enough that companies would import millions of iPhones from other regions and sell them in the EU.
For warranty service, the company would ship the phones back to the original country where Apple sold them.
Then, if that causes Apple too much trouble, then Apple would have to detect that the phone had been spending most of the time in the EU, and refuse to provide free servicing under warranty.
That’s an interesting can of worms for Apple.
Tech behemoth attempts to blackmail an entire continent. In other news: the sky remains blue.
This alone should have some consequences. Blackmailing done by a person is a criminal matter.
What I get from this is that anti-monopoly rules are disrupting Apple's business model. That's great!
Apple's statement is here: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/the-digital-markets-a...
Obviously Apple will never leave a market with 450M people and give this market to its competitors.
They threatened to & then followed through turning off Advanced Data Protection in the UK and removed the features, pointing to the pending laws in that region.
Apple does not seem to have a reputation for bluffing.
Apple would be giving away +$100B every year to Samsung and others companies.
What would the EU lose?
Apple would still sell a large number of devices, but not have to provide an extra year of EU warranty for free. Or any warranty, actually.
Tariffs also become less of Apple's problem when the phones aren't being sold via official channels. The EU is not a growing market of consideration compared to China or India.
> What would the EU lose?
A very secure smartphone option for consumers.
I don’t see how these two things are comparable, considering the scale.
> how these two things are comparable
Apple has done other unprecedented things, after claiming "if this doesn't change, we will take something from customers"
Apple rarely takes something from customers, to the point I'm searching for examples beyond iCards... which are back recently as Invites
“If DMA doesn’t change, we’ll drop some 25% of our revenue” sounds orders of magnitude bigger than “we’ll disable ADP”, which was the example given by OP.
It’s like a comparison of “I’d be mildly annoyed” vs. “I’ll burn myself alive” as far as reactions go.
Plus the EU is only like 7% of Apple's revenue, so I'm also in the camp of "I don't think they are bluffing." They'd still have UK & Norway, both of which have a higher share of iOS than other European nations.
The US & China are much bigger, more important markets for Apple.
> Plus the EU is only like 7% of Apple's revenue
It appears that Europe is 26% of Apple's revenue. (https://bullfincher.io/companies/apple/revenue-by-geography)
You are correct, I had my numbers mixed up.
EU is 7% of Apple's app store revenue specifically, not total revenue.
Definitely makes it seem more likely they are bluffing in that case unless they plan on just selling dumb phones with no app store.
Apple completely leaving the EU means most of their network effect is gone.
Any app targeting the EU is then required to go android first, and other markets will have a real life sample of what happens when Apple leaves, which won't be as catastrophic as Apple predicts.
Sony and Sharp won't be crying a river if Japan does the same move for instance.
> Plus the EU is only like 7% of Apple's revenue
I doubt that.
E.g. according to these charts, it's at least a quarter of profits: https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/metrics/revenue-by-geo...
> so I'm also in the camp of "I don't think they are bluffing."
How big is Russian market do you think? They didn't quit even that, and here we are pretending that Apple is going to quit EU.
> They'd still have UK & Norway, both of which have a higher share of iOS than other European nations.
UK and Norway is ~75 million people
EU is 450 million people
> The US & China are much bigger, more important markets for Apple.
So, a wealthy US market with 350 million people is very important. Unlike the wealthy EU market with 450 million people which Apple can just easily abandon.
You are correct, I had my numbers mixed up. EU is 7% of Apple's app store revenue specifically, not total revenue.
Definitely makes it seem more likely they are bluffing in that case unless they plan on just selling dumb phones with no app store.
They might kill features for various reasons, but never left a market at this point I think ?
I thought Apple would leave Brazil or China before we'd see them leave the EU, but I don't think I can think of Apple bluffing in this way before, either
What an empty threat. Apple has 1/3 of the mobile market share in Europe and people here are not locked into the ecosystem, with 3P messaging apps like WhatsApp dominating communication. And they are trying to pull this BS at a time that they are facing ever stronger competition from foldable phones and their inability to do anything useful in AI.
As far as I'm concerned, I lowkey want them to do that. Would open up space for an alternative.
As good as Apple hardware is (well in the designe department at least) their behavior is terrible for consumers and their OSs are becoming a joke. So, it's not like we would lose something particularly great.
Everyone will have to come to Switzerland to buy their apple gear. We have the live translation feature now.
There's a few other countries in Europe where it's released but their vat is much higher. I think apple normalizes prices across countries but every now and then it's cheaper to buy apple gear here. There was even a time when iPhones were cheaper here than in the USA because of some exchange rate issues.
Thank God for that. Can Tesla and Meta stop as well?
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
The EU.
When we are doing that, Microsoft and Alphabet too please.
Just some protections so that China doesn't take over and then let the free market do its work.
Oh no, I can't buy the overpriced feature phone that can't even perform basic tasks like blocking ads, whatever will I do-!
Flippin' Symbian phones from early 2010's are more capable and yet they are the ones we call "dumbphones"...
> Flippin' Symbian phones from early 2010's are more capable
As a person who used them then and still have a few working that I turn on now and then, this is nostalgic bunk. Symbian phone hardware & software SDK were a disorganized mess. By 2010, Symbian phones were stagnant and the market was mostly abandoned.
The Symbian OS had promise, but it was not realized. There is a reason the 2007 iPhone totally disrupted PalmPC/PalmOS/webOS/Symbian and wiped them from the landscape.
Well at least you could sideload apps…
> Symbian phones from early 2010's are more capable...
I suppose there was no need to mention Symbian. It was a hellish system to develop for, and once smartphones had a little more RAM and CPU power, Symbian had absolutely no future. Nokia's answer to the iPhone was MeeGo [0], which wasn't bad, but Google's Android was, in fact, even better.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo
> Google's Android was, in fact, even better.
More like it was around three years earlier to the market, and already had a huge network of users, developers and apps.
This is the same Apple that was talking about how privacy conscious they're and caved in to China but decides to strong arm Europe.
China has trade leverage. EU is not negotiating from a position of strength.
Apple's main strategy back when Cambridge analytica incident happened was that they're privacy first company. Clearly, they were not and this incident just shows they only talked the talk as long as it was convenient for them
> EU is not negotiating from a position of strength.
This is starting to become apparent in a variety of aspects of life. The past 2 or 3 decades the EU (and most of the world) has sort of ignored "might makes right" in favor of mutual respect.
However, when shit hits the fan, you need to negotiate from a strong position like you've said and the EU lacks that -- customers, supply chains, military, economic, you name it.
Yeah sure that will happen in the real world It is of Apples most lucrative markets. I fully understand their frustration but I sincerely doubt that their shareholders will accept it.
Doing it for a week, perhaps, to make a point and see if EU caves from it, which I dont see happening either.
Please do so, we sure won't miss you. Hope Google does the same. Back to good ol' no tech world, this ultra connected surveillance dopamine farm thingy was just a fever dream.
Stop shipping to EU? Didn't work for Russia [0][1], will not work for the EU either.
[0]: https://msk-apple.ru/
[1]: https://apple-com.ru/
> disrupting the seamless way Apple products work together
this defense argument seems really counter productive as it feels exactly the point of antitrust laws.
Just like disrupting the seamless way internet explorer worked together with Windows was exactly the point.
Also the "Pornography, in my iPhone?!" has meme potential.
Do not allow underage kids use smartphones. All problems solved. Thank you for attending my TED talk.
This is great so long as the EU keeps its spine and doesn’t budge. Apple has behaved like a petulant child with the DMA and there’s zero chance their shareholders will willingly drop such a significant revenue %. The EU holds a lot of sway here, just don’t blink first please.
EU is about 7% of Apple's revenue. Opening up the platform and allowing interoperability may actually harm more than that, I can envision a situation where Apple would actually be better off just pulling out.
I believe that 7% is just App Store [1]? Including hardware it’d be much more significant.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/01/apple-says-eu-represents-7...
It's sad to see how poorly the U.S. has been enforcing (and interpreting) its own anti-trust legislation the last ~40 years. In my view that decline has been one of the contributing factors to the growing business oligarchy in the country.
Funnily, the previous EU commissioner for competition, who has spearheaded these clashes between EU and the U.S. tech giants has stated that the U.S. basically wrote the book on sensible anti-trust legislation back in the day, and that the EU's current laws are greatly inspired by the historical example of the U.S.
> Apple added that Brussels was creating unfair competition as the rules were not applied to Samsung, the largest smartphone provider in the EU.
This is disingenuous. The DMA gatekeeper rules apply to Android and Google Play, and Samsung's live translation feature does not appear to be tied to specific earbuds.
Pretty scary for Apple shareholders. They're basically saying that the extremely expensive hardware alone isn't enough to make a profit anymore? They're that reliant on the app store monopoly now?
They're reliant on ecosystem lock-in. An iPhone begets AirPods, Mac, iPad, Watch and Services (Apple Music, TV+, etc.).
I use and like my macbooks, but the only reason I remain on iOS is for the integration. Auto switching with airpods, continuity camera, universal control, shared clipboard, etc.
The moment that third party software & hardware can use those APIs and integrate to the same level that Apple's own tech can, Apple no longer as a unique selling point (outside of maybe Advanced Data Protection) vs. any other smartphone.
I'd love to use my macbook, an Android phone, AirPods, and a Pixel watch all together to the level of seamlessness that Apple's own ecosystem integrates.
"Service" has already been about half of Apple's profits for a few years now, on par with hardware sales.
Company that makes vast profits from its monopoly over a digital market is against legislation to stop companies from exploiting monopolies over digital markets.
I am shocked!
> “Pornography apps are available on iPhone from other marketplaces – apps we’ve never allowed on the App Store because of the risks they create, especially for children,”
Why are they going to this now ? Nobody is holding apple responsible for that. It's just another 'think of the children' fear mongering while with the other face they want to be able to record everything without explicit consent or with some guadrails ?
Apple can adapt if they want to participate in the EU market, like others have. They seem to think that it works like their lobby groups in the US.
Just waiting for Macron to receive an expensive plaque from 'Tim Apple'.
The porn thing is unsurprising. Apple is notoriously picky about their brand image and what their devices can be used for, or seen being used for (famously, to use iPhones in movies they are not allowed to be used by villains).
Eh it's not new, Apple is pretty much the reason tumblr got rid of nsfw content (I've heard it's sort of back now but idk I'm never going back to tumblr).
It's why even if an app in the app store is rated 17+ it still can't really have nudity in it.
Then why Reddit and Twitter continue to have NSFW? Why I can open Safari and see porn if I want to? Should not be that removed from AppStore and iOS as well?
Oh no... I am sure it won't be like the last 80 times one of the big tech companies threatened to leave the market.
That’s rich. They do malicious compliance until they’re blue in the face and then blame the EU for it. Not even that tired “think of the children” shtick is too low for them. Pfui.
It's quite interesting to see the sentiment turn against Apple. Even here, on a site which is generally anti-EU no one is buying Apple's whining.
Timezones. The US lobby has barely started their work day. In any case it's a bit premature to make conclusions on overall community sentiment an hour in.
Is this a threat or a promise?
My personal position is “go ahead then.”
can't wait!
Presumably I speak not only for myself. My reply is zero. Zero is the exact number of fucks given.
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