I would so love to have Google Assistant rather than Siri on my iPhone. GA is so much better hands-free / eyes-free. Being able to say "OK Google ...." when driving, cooking, working out, etc and being able to get a decent answer is something I really miss from my Pixel days. It is so frustrating when Siri just says "here is what I found on the web"

It's likely that third-party assistants will only be accessible via the side button.

And there is zero chance Apple will allow third parties to submit their own model since this part of the hardware has continuous access to the microphone.

Apple does not need to run the quasi government for 50% of US consumer Internet users, which is effectively what they were doing.

This will free them up to focus on excellence and innovation.

Now add the money incentive and you get apps that track and trick you in every turn because the competition is so heavy and marketing costly. Let’s say Netflix makes their own app store for Netflix and their games. If they loose around a third of their customers it’s still ok. Now Netflix plays fast and loose with the sandboxing because they really want feature x, like lock the screen to the Netflix app only unlockable with their PIN, so they allow this, suddenly another app with malicious intent uses the feature. We have seen similar things happen on early versions of Windows mobile and Palm Pilot.

I get the argument that Apple fighting on behalf of users can be good. Unfortunately they went well beyond that remit, and have blocked all kinds of useful applications on specious and moral grounds. What right should Apple have to block xCloud? Or Fortnite? Or emulators? Or torrent applications? Or crypto wallets? Or adult themed apps? Or Parler? And this says nothing of their predatory revenue model. They had their chance to be good citizens of a dominant platform. They totally blew it. They chose to tell users and legislators to go fuck themselves. This is 100% Apple’s fault.

* Require apps to pay their commission similar to the Netherlands dating apps situation.

* Only allow apps to be installed that have a valid certificate.

* Require apps on their store to go through the approval process.

Edit: I'm not sure if the third point has been edited or I simply misread it, but the DMA would not prevent Apple from moderating their own App Store. It would prevent Apple from moderating apps on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

I especially love the idea that the DMA prevents Apple from moderating apps inside their store.

And no I didn’t edit my comment. Feel free to provide evidence of the others.

Just to be clear, I'm not stating that Apple won't be able to moderate apps on their store. I'm stating that Apple won't be able to moderate apps on their operating systems.

The Gatekeeper must allow installation of applications (Article 4. S4):

> The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software applications or software application stores from prompting end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users who decide to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default to carry out that change easily.

There is no wiggle room here. The Gatekeeper can't restrict installation of applications in any way, including by way of certificate requirements, approval processes, or fees.

You can read the Act in full here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/1925/oj

If you're a legal geek like I am it's worth spending a few hours combing through it. I am thoroughly impressed with how meticulous they've been. It's easily the most comprehensive (and impressive) tech legislation in my lifetime.

Why do so many people want to force Apple to make them an Android phone?

(And also, I viscerally disagree that a smart phone is in any way, shape or form, an "appliance". Appliances exist to serve a specific purpose. The main differentiation between an appliance containing a computer, and a computer, is that the appliance's computer hardware and software exists to drive the main function of the appliance. Smart phones are being used as pocket computers. That's not an appliance.)

Install and run programs? Yep. Perform productivity tasks, like edit video or even sketch? Yep. Writing blog posts, browsing the internet? Yep. Playing video games, streaming videos? Yep.

My friend. You can fight it, but this is a general purpose mobile computer.

It's worse optically considering how big of a conflict of interest it is for them, and astounding considering that on macOS, a platform with browser choices, Apple has no issues supporting WebM. No battery life problems or anything.

(On Android, I do definitely take advantage of being able to use Termux, and Yt-dlp, and actually manage files. That said: this is the exception. It's very useful, but not something I'd even consider absolutely necessary.)

No, it isn't; the iPhones are a dramatically better value provided you're not looking at the high end. The SE 2 and Pixel 6A have as much useful life remaining in them- they'll leave support at the same time and are competitive in terms of performance. The problem, of course, is that the SE 2 is half the price of the Pixel 6A.

At the same price point, you have the SE 3, which is an iPhone 13 inside; Apple just happens to be 2014 Intel compared to the 2014 AMD of Qualcomm/Samsung/Google (yes, they really are that bad at CPU design). 90Hz screens aren't an advantage if the hardware and software can't keep (or stop keeping) up, and Android only has disadvantages in those areas.

The only things I wish my iPhone did was block ads on YouTube (and play videos with the screen off) and not require a hundred dollar subscription fee for the privilege of not arbitrary expiring my applications after 7 days. NewPipe, uBlock Origin, and being able to install whatever I want are massive boons for the way I use my phone; provided iOS had those things, I would likely never consider an Android phone again barring significant hardware changes that Apple intentionally fails to integrate (like the foldable screens).

Hardware.

> It's my impression that the hardware for newer android phones is pretty much on par, no?

eh.

None of my friends are willing to download messaging apps so I need iMessage in order to have a semi decent text conversation with them.

And no one is forcing you to buy an iPhone. Why don't you buy Android if you want to do all that stuff?

I recently switched to an iPhone because I want everything to "just work" and not deal with the android crap- and I honestly couldn't be happier.

>Not all iPhone users are the same

Actually most of them are- they don't want to deal managing a device.. they just want something that works.

This is turning something that should be a gradient into a zero-sum. Features like side load dot not make existing features stop working. Allowing other browsers doesn't make iPhone just not work.

> they just want something that works.

The reason people are interested in side loading apps and opening up iOS is there are quite a few people like me that drop $1000 on an iPhone, and it does not just work for me when it really should work better than a $100 Android. The only difference seems to be anti-me features that protect Apple's monopoly on the app store.

None of that will change.

Whatever changes Apple will have to make to support drop-in replacements for Siri, a complete elimination of certification requirements for Gatekeeper, and so on, as listed in this very thread, will absolutely disrupt the status quo and make things more complex.

I hope that Apple will strive to make it so the defaults match the current reality, but just like soldered-in batteries mean more capacity without the need for connectors, so too do baked-in defaults mean more stability without the need to pluggability.

It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that.

Truth be told, I don't care about alternate voice assistants. That said, today, you can get almost all of Google Assistant on an iPhone just fine, the only thing it really can't do is well, respond to your voice passively and do things on the lock screen. Exactly how much power they're willing to expose I'm not sure, but it doesn't really seem like they have to give everyone access to the same internal APIs they use so as long as the APIs they provide give enough feature parity.

I think the sky is not falling.

The sky isn't falling by any means, but iOS is absolutely going to get more complicated as a result of these changes, even for people who stick with the defaults, as I likely will in most or all cases.

And of course I wonder: will Apple be releasing Siri for Android? Presumably Google would be required to allow for it.

It doesn't seem possible that Apple would not have coded Safari up in a way that they would be able to replace the engine. I don't see why they would have couple it so tightly. It seems un-Apple like. What if they wanted to replace the engine?

However, they do release WebKit for use by others, so in that sense I presume there's a certain looseness in the coupling. Which is not to say there aren't assumptions that will have to be unwound.

Standards change over time so the existing engine picks up cruft.

Sometimes I don't like democrats. I don't like all policies backed by democratic candidates, and I definitely have problems with the DNC. However, that doesn't mean I want to vote Republican, or Green Party, or Libertarian.

Please don't get caught up in taking the analogy to it's logical extreme (or read it literally, because it's not literal.) The point is that there is no perfect option on the market for me. I don't have a single criteria for the perfect smartphone. I don't just want a device that boots Firefox well.

And in fact, Apple, much to the chagrin of those of us who hate Apple, makes some of the best computer and phone hardware on the planet. It's not even a contest, in some cases.

Do you use a macOS computer by chance? Do you feel like the Asahi Linux effort is harming your ability to use and enjoy the Mac computer? Does it cause problems for you, or make things no longer "just work", when someone is allowed to install Firefox?

> Why don't you buy Android if you want to do all that stuff?

I do. They're not perfect either. Google Pixel phones are pretty good, but I doubt I need to expound upon the problems of them for you. You pretty much seem to get it given the next few lines. (Not trying to be condescending here.)

> Actually most of them are- they don't want to deal managing a device.. they just want something that works.

Most users of all mass-market devices are like this, be it Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel or iPhone. It's not really to your point, though, because iPhone has bred perhaps one of the most interesting communities through people's sheer desires to break it apart and customize it. I'm sure you're aware of the rich history of jailbreaking iPhones; and while a small percent of users, (just like Android rooting,) those jailbreaks get nontrivial huge amounts of attention. It's basically international news when a new untethered jailbreak kit shows up, and undoubtedly millions of users use them.

Apple may very well not want these users, but Apple wants to make the world's best phone. Well, you may not want the consumer you get, but that's the symmetry of this all. There's a give and a take.

It's because they want to "Think Different" than the way Apple wants them to.

It's your phone. Shouldn't you be able to run the software you want on it?

It's true that some Android phones are more locked down than others.

However, on most you can side load apps and install alternative App Stores such as f-Droid or Amazon, with just a few settings changes.

The same is not possible with Apple devices. You can temporarily side load an app if you pay the costs to get a developer key to sign an app. Alternative App Stores are just not possible yet.

Well the built-in software will still be there. And if you have a use-case that it doesn't support then you'll have the option to install other software that does. Seems like a pure win from a user perspective.

For years, I had the jailbreak installed only for a single feature.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

Eu mandated that the users should be clearly told what would be tracked, they should be given an easy way to accept, reject, and choose which of them they accept.

The corporations - mainly the US - chose to 'get around' these requirements in the undying US corporate tradition: Make it difficult for the user to reject cookies so they will have to give up and just accept. Most modals have only an 'accept' and 'choose' sections, and the 'choose' section includes a gigantic list of 'vendors' which you have to individually turn off one by one. So that you will give up and just click 'accept'. Some of them offer a 'reject all' button way at the bottom of of the list, after listing 30-40 vendors. So basically its the usual corporate trickery to force user to do things they don't want to.

However, this is illegal - Eu works on civil law, and civil law is a clear, well defined legal practice. If it says you have to do some specific thing, there isnt much 'interpret my way around it'. So, per that law, all the cookie modals that do not give the users an EASY way to reject cookies are in violation of that law. It absolutely does not matter zit if the user 'consents' to the terms. Mutual agreements and contract law overriding actual law is a trait of the Anglosaxon common law, not civil law. In civil law, it doesnt matter zit if the other party agreed to something illegal per law.

Therefore, not only all these pesky modals that try to force you into accepting those ~80 cookies from a random website you visit are not Eu's doing, but also most of them are actually in violation of the GDPR law.

So if the website doesn't collect any data at all, except for what is needed for running the website and preventing malicious users (so, collecting ips for a week in the logs to use fail2ban), do they need a "privacy" section?

I ask because a privacy section requires a lawyer, and that is a big cost for a simple static website with no earning goals

I dont think they do. There are such sites indeed and I havent seen any prompts in them.

> so, collecting ips for a week in the logs to use fail2ban

IP by solely itself wouldnt constitute 'Personally identifiable information' as far as I know. But Im not sure.

> I ask because a privacy section requires a lawyer

Not really. Website privacy legal templates already exist and they are pretty standard at this point.

IP is considered identifiable information if it's used for some purpose (e.g. statistics for website visits). I'm pretty sure it's considered "legit use" if it's for filtering malicious users.

Could you point to some of those standards? I had a customers reaching out and found myself without any idea how to handle that privacy section.

> IP is considered identifiable information

Not at all. IP by itself is meaningless and it just points to a computer or a proxy. Only if you have other information then it starts becoming identifiable. Even in court cases that involve IPs its not enough - the ISP gives the IP to the court, but then the court must find who was the person using that IP at that given point in time in that house, even the person using the computer.

> Could you point to some of those standards?

You can just google privacy section templates with GDPR keyword. There are a lot of templates as such. WordPress itself provides an easy way to create such templates and it already has GDPR tools built in.

I feel like people give a pass and even defend it because it had good intentions. Clearly it wasn't well thought and people should criticize it more instead. Bad execution can ruin good ideas.

Of course there are other good things on GDPR as a whole but this cookie consent thing was a disaster. I live in the EU but use a VPN routing my connections to a nearby non-eu country to have an overall better browsing experience.

Its not open to abuse. Its just that the US corporations are violating its articles.

> Clearly it wasn't well thought

It was well thought out. It mandates easy Accept / Reject for tracking. Just one click. Tell the users what you will track. And allow them to choose if they want to.

The route that the US corps. took is no different from how they go around and violate laws in their home turf. They think that they can do the same with civil law. But it doesn't work that way. Eventually one will get busted for not obliging with the articles of the law.

There’s no good idea that the EU won’t find some way to execute poorly, alas.

What you say just sounds like Daily Mirror grade smear.

The EU is great at taking credit for things it had very little to do with. Sometimes it’s obvious things that happen elsewhere without the EU (expiration dates on food), sometimes it’s the work of other organisations (like NATO). “Oh, there’s peace in Europe? Yeah, the EU did that. Oh, there’s war in Europe? Hmm, more EU should fix that.”

> What you say just sounds like Daily Mirror grade smear.

I’m a euro-federalist, so I doubt the Daily Mirror would be interested. The EU is a mixed bag and I want it to do better. Reflexively attacking people whose views you know very little about seems unconstructive.

A large part of the world adopted such rules after the Eu implemented them. The Eu is seen as the leader and standard in these things. Eu implemented consumer protections, everyone else in OECD also did. Eu implemented EUVAT, OECD countries are also doing it. Also various US states. Eu implemented GDPR, and suddenly from Brazil to US every other country or state has their own GDPR.

Now the Eu has its digital gatekeepers law. Watch how long will it take for other OECD countries to adopt similar laws.

> Reflexively attacking people whose views you know very little

Sorry but we are on public internet. We dont have the time to sit and get to know people. If you are talking like the people from a certain group, then its normal that people respond to you as if you were from that group.

Moreover, the culture that people grow up in affects their perspective greatly. Not surprisingly, having grown in an Anglosaxon country seems to have shaped your perspective too.

We had most of these other things before EU even existed. Brazilian's Código de Defesa do Consumidor dates from 1990. Expiration dates are such a common thing worldwide its not even worth searching on there internet. A quality assurance institution named INMETRO exists since the 70s testing everything from condoms reliability to reporting small parts in children's toys. Brazil also pioneered net neutrality one year before the EU.

Talking about culture perspective you seem to admire the EU regulatory frame and that's fine but as I said before nothing is perfect and its totally ok to criticize something that is poorly conceived even if intentions were good.

Nope. Euparl does most of these regulations. The GDPR, digital gatekeepers and various other internet related laws originated from the left wing parties in Euparl - those parties grew from pirate party roots. The pirate parties that were founded in many Eu countries in mid 2000s during the copyright/filesharing battles.

That is a big factor in proliferation of such agreements, however thats not the normal mechanic. Japan has no need for copying EUVAT to trade with the Eu for example. But they are doing it. Also, various US states implemented similar schemes without any such need.

> Talking about culture perspective you seem to admire the EU regulatory frame

I explicitly do. What you are seeing with the emergence of recent regulations like GDPR, digital gatekeepers is due to the ascent of pro-people, pro open web parties that grew from pirate party roots coming to power in the Eu parliament.

> A quality assurance institution named INMETRO exists since the 70s

Eu started as a coal cooperation organization in mid 1950s and by 70s most of its institutions and practices were in place - especially in the direction of consumer, product and manufacturing regulations. It was the example even by then.

The idea of VAT dates back to the First World War, and while the EU assists European governments in coordinating its collection in Europe, it had no meaningful impact on the adoption of VAT-style taxes overseas. Neither Australia nor the United States levy VAT.

Consumer protections absolutely do not originate in the EU. It’s a claim so absurd I honestly don’t know what to say to it. English civil law has had case law and statute protecting consumers for centuries, which is in no way remarkable, seeing as even Roman law had consumer protections in cases of fraud, mistake, or duress.

The idea that the EU is some shining beacon on a hill that everyone looks up to is something one hears a lot around Europe, but I think the people who think this may have places like Moldova confused with the rest of the world. The EU is the fastest shrinking trade bloc, in relative terms, on the face of the planet. Europeans used to like saying that if they were a single country, they’d be the largest economy in the world. That ceased to be true in the last few years - the US has now overtaken the EU. Whereas the US has to manage runaway growth and speculative excess, the EU is forced to make provisions for its relative economic decline. If European countries were US states, living standards in large European economies like Germany and France would rank near the bottom. This is a huge problem. Less prosperity means less quality government services, including healthcare, social security, and education. Less growth over time means fewer nurses, fewer teachers in the future. If the EU single market is such a towering achievement, why is EU growth so sclerotic? It’s hard for Europeans to hear, but the EU is simply not a model people outside of Europe aspire to, even people who otherwise love Europe.

The European project has wonderful achievements, in my opinion, like the Schengen area, and deep scientific and educational cooperation, including Erasmus exchanges for young people. But instead of focusing on those, the EU prefers to claim credit for the sunrise. I’d rather see the EU reformed than abolished - it’s still a net good, I think - but far too many Europeans are far too myopic about the EU’s shortcomings, and far too ignorant about how the rest of the world functions to consider alternatives. (Or even just apply a reasonable degree of scepticism when the EU claims credit for things that predate it or that are already widespread elsewhere.)

> Sorry but we are on public internet. We dont have the time to sit and get to know people.

You seem to be defending bad faith assumptions as a time saving device. Seems to me like that would just set you up for a lot of unnecessarily adversarial discussions, and a generally less pleasant experience than you could be having.

As software, firmware, and hardware lines blur, it's a legacy concept that hardware and software must be divided.

Incredible value comes from fluid and designer-driven remixing of the three according to usability, ruggedness/resilience, and security principles.

The most useful appliances for Normals™ will be the ones that blend these best. This kind of ruling holds us back from the huge vertically integrated design investments that deliver ease of use and trust that end users want.

TL;DR many Apple users like the way things are now, and don't want any amount of risk to that. The chief risk we see is that we'll no longer be able to get 100% of the software we want (or are forced to use) on iOS through the Apple app store, with all of Apple's protections and guarantees, or that Apple will have to reduce those protections and guarantees to keep such a splintering from happening. Yes, we're aware that Android hasn't seen much adoption of alternative stores, but Android also hasn't (delightfully) jammed a thumb in Facebook's eye over and over. Even a small chance of that coming to pass isn't worth it to us. We wish you'd all just go use Android or Linux phones or whatever and leave us alone.

It's fine that you enjoy Apple's curation, they can still curate things for you under the new law. They just also need to provide competitive app distribution. Considering how many complaints I've heard from devs vis-a-vis the App Store, I reckon some competition is exactly what Apple needs to put them in line.

Yes. So you get why some of us aren't thrilled about all this.

I don't think that's ever been the case. You've never been able to get an alternative browser on the Apple App Store or a streaming gaming app such as Xbox Cloud Gaming, or Geforce Now. Or currently I cannot get Fortnite

These are all apps I want that are not available on the Apple App Store.

(Btw, SetApp app approach works too.)

Meanwhile, Steam competes with Gig on PC and charges 30%. All this 'allow alt app stores to break apple's pricing' (zero other real benefits are cited) has not happened on PC.

Steam is a different product in a different market. Steam's 30% is set by the market deciding that Steam's value is worth the 30%. Apple's 30% comes from whatever Apple feels like charging because there is no alternatives, hence the complaints. If you believe Apple's 30% comes from value and that no one can beat it, then they should be able to prove it in some free market competition like Steam has.

Which is fine, to be clear. It's just opinions and preferences.

And that's how it will be if you choose to use Apple's software sources. Its as simple as that.

There is absolutely no argument for preventing other people from using something else.

There is though. I'm not going to post it yet again because it's already in this thread multiple times, and in literally every other thread like this ever on this site.

You might disagree with the argument, but you're flat-out wrong that it doesn't exist or can be trivially dismissed on factual grounds.

Santa EU seems to be bringing me the gift I've always wanted.

> 4. The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software applications or software application stores from prompting end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users who decide to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default to carry out that change easily.

This would ironically make me come back to iOS. I use Android because google's voice system is magnitudes better than Siri.