Devs say Apple still flouting EU's Digital Markets Act six months on(theregister.com) |
Devs say Apple still flouting EU's Digital Markets Act six months on(theregister.com) |
Steve Jobs pitched PWAs way back when, I don't know why all we've gotten is a half-baked solution from Apple other than they want you in their App Store with a native app.
I know that Apple made some huge advances in that within the past couple of years, but I...generally don't want PWAs myself, so I haven't paid very close attention. If you don't use Apple devices, and thus also don't pay very close attention, you might check and verify whether what you expect to be true still is.
Where "support PWA" and "no shenanigans" are which of the ever shifting sets of APIs?
You shouldn't have to install things on your phone. Most "apps" should just be websites, with a bookmark if you so choose.
Did the European Commission agree to the January 2026 deadline or not? Have they been working internally behind the scenes with Apple or are they as in the dark as these developers? What is the legal mechanism to push disclosure a month earlier and why is the letter only being published now?
These are sincere questions of mine, in case it's not clear.
Think of it this way: I am blocking part of your driveway for some reasons, and after a while me and the city inspector agree that I will remedy the situation next year. Would you accept that, or would you tell the inspector that your driveway is still not useable and that I should be quicker?
The April 2025 non-compliance decision the app devs reference is regarding the DMA anti-steering provisions (Article 5(4)). This decision was that Apple failed to meet their compliance obligations that were specified way back in June 2024, that they would be subject to a fine, and that they would have 60 days to comply before being subject to periodic fines [1].
The Coalition for App Fairness is saying that they don't believe Apple's App Store anti-steering remediation is compliant or timely and that the EU needs to take further action.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
Apple care about the American and Asian markets. They have long treated the EU as a joke whose consumer laws they can ignore.
That is why, the past few years, Apple has behaved so petulantly and strangely in reaction to EU stipulations. They feel it's beneath them.
As a consumer with the resources to leave, the choice is simple.
In reality there are only two mobile operating systems where there is any hardware to purchase in my town. These two operating systems are the only mobile devices where my bank (and as far as I am aware other competing banks in my area) offer banking on.
There are many variables that goes into the purchase of a mobile phone, the App Store is only one of many. Google is marginally better at allowing side-loading or alternative stores, there is a degree of flexibility in hardware choices and so on. But on the other hand I trust Apple more (absolutely not fully, mind you) with regards to general privacy for example. This privacy protection in conjunction with significantly better movie recording compared to Android are the two primary reasons I stay on iOS.
But at the same time, I am highly critical of Apple’s conduct here. And because it is effectively impossible to vote with my wallet I am voting with my vote so that politicians enact policies that allow me to use my devices the way I want.
It seems like the app store review process is designed to be opaque enough to ensure Apple gets their way in their sandbox, regardless of judicial ruling. In my experience, the review process is wildly inconsistent.
Apple and Amazon made a deal years ago where you can buy digital videos within Amazon Prime Video using your Amazon account.
But let’s be real, the only apps making money directly from in app purchases are pay to win games. It came out in Apple vs Epic that 90% of App Store revenue comes from games.
The other companies making money are mostly selling subscriptions to SaaS apps/services that you can use one subscription anywhere and have always been paying outside of the App Store.
That, and:
* Customization is better -- Apple has nothing like Good Lock, which is developed AND officially supported by Samsung,
* AI is better -- And Samsung even gives the choice to run AI features completely locally on your phone -or- in the cloud,
* Features for power users are all around better -- As a example did you know Google built a freaking virtualization service which allows you to run a full Linux operating system, with an complete KDE Plasma or GNOME UI on top of Android? Well, now you do. Super fun feature to have on a phone. Even more super fun feature to have on a tablet.
And then there's DeX -- at least on the Galaxies, as long as Google is working on the built in desktop features for the next Android release.
And for those times you quickly want or need a Linux shell you can launch Termux (https://termux.dev/en/).
Most notably and importantly: for all these things you don't have to root or jailbreak ANYTHING... They work completely out of the box -- Although you can get a scary sounding warning when downloading stuff from outside the Play store, but if you really understand and can deal with the consequences this can be easily solved using a toggle button.
How Apple keeps managing to drive themselves and their developer ecosystem completely in the ground still is completely baffling to me. And that comes from someone who really used to love Apple, back in the Jobs era (Got the first iPod, iPhone, iPad, and first Intel MacBook Pro to prove it).
PS: Because lots of people got super pissed about Google abandoning sideloading on Android they walked back on their initial decisions and it will keep working for the foreseeable future
I mean, it absolutely worked for effectively sinking the GDPR, where pretty much everyone now equates that law with obnoxious 'cookie banners', to the point that these regulations are being relaxed, despite never requiring these banners in any way, shape or form in the first place.
But, yeah, despite that, I'd say they'll get away with this as well...
I don't think DMCA has anything to do with that though I did wish everyone hated it. You probably meant GDPR.
> "We have seen this playbook before in Europe and beyond," the signatories warn, adding that they suspect any new terms will continue to impose fees that would violate the law.
So the complaint is that they might violate the law next month?
It's Apple which is the bully.
More serious problems blocking a transition to Android: instead of developing Health Connect in 2015 or before when Apple made HealthKit, Android waited until the mid-2020s, and many apps do not support it. And the implementation is busted if you use multiple devices. Meanwhile on iOS, I have a perfect database of all my health information going back years, and all the apps interpolate nicely - my nutrition tracking app can see my exercise and blood glucose, my glucose tracking app can show exercise on the timeline, my training readiness app can read my sleep data and HRV/RHR from the watch.
And as far as I know Android still doesn’t have Focus Modes, which I rely on to customize my phone and watch. It works really well, integrates with apps, and is easily automatable.
[1]: edit - I thought this was old news, from years ago, but it turns out Android not being able to make emergency calls is an evergreen story. At one point it was Teams’ fault [2] - can you imagine that? Teams being so bad it can block your phone from calling 911? But really it’s android’s fault such a thing is possible. https://www.androidpolice.com/google-pixels-most-dangerous-b... [2]: https://medium.com/@mmrahman123/how-a-bug-in-android-and-mic...
Google Fit was released in 2014 and implemented data migration to Health Connect when that launched. Similarly, Samsung Health synchronizes data with Health Connect.
The long-fixed bug tickled by Teams was in functionality iOS still doesn't provide. If I use Google Voice, Skype, Signal, or some other telephony service, Android lets me route all outgoing calls through that service automatically.
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-power-users-install...
Also, how sideloading works seemingly varies from vendor to vendor. On my Samsung devices I never had to fiddle with ADB or developer mode to install a APK from outside the Play store, I just download something, toggle crapware protection off, install, toggle crapware protection on and I'm done. Think it might has something to with all the customization work Samsung put into One UI (and just outright removing stuff from Google they didn't like).
But you are right, insofar that it likely is only a matter of time until Google's walled garden is as walled in as the one of Apple.
No, that's not my point.
My point is that there's no such thing as PWA. There's a lose collection of standards, and everyone choses a set that benefits their narrative when defining PWAs.
For a very long time Apple supported all APIs (except maybe notifications) that even Google defined as necessary for something to be a PWA. Didn't stop people from pretending that this is somehow not PWA.
> Most "apps" should just be websites, with a bookmark if you so choose.
As Android shows, even there no one wants that, and there are very few PWAs of note.
Also, Mac is also Apple's platform.
2. Why would Apple be entitled, for example, for any money that people pay to a service outside of Apple's platform?
3. Apple is a part of duopoly for devices which are integral part of life. No, they don't get to dictate everything that's happening on their platform
4. All EU said: behave, be more competitive. Apple behaves as we have seen: a cross between a bully and a petulant child
The unfortunate reality is that we have a duopoly in the mobile device market and having one of those devices are now a practical necessity to live a normal life for most people. Without regulation to force the market to open up there's little to stop organisations that want ever more control over the devices you can use to access their systems. Trying to go outside the two big players just means you're going to get a substandard or completely pointless experience. And even governments are in on it.
Which is going to be interesting when both the huge US corporations that form that duopoly and/or the government of their home nation decide to do something that goes against what the government or laws in other places want to happen.
Not glorified webpages. Full on apps. Preferably by the banks themselves (sorry bedroom hobbyists, I don't quite trust you with my banking details yet!)
And this is the problem. We should insist on standard web pages for everything, and never allow closed source apps on our devices. Native apps are far less sandboxed and under certain conditions make it trivial to spy on the user by accessing contact lists, other apps installed and more.
AFAIK the only Android derivative that has patched the most obvious security issues of this kind is Graphene.
It certainly does require informed consent in other situations though and the dreaded cookie banners were the industry's attempt to interpret that legal requirement.
The cookie banner requirement is itself a widespread misconception because the actual rule is neither specific to cookies (it would also cover other locally stored data) nor universal (for example it doesn't require specific consent for locally storing necessary data like session/login mechanics or the contents of a shopping basket).
The requirements for consent that do exist originate in the ePrivacy Directive. That directive was supposed to be superseded by a later ePrivacy Regulation that would have been lex specialis to the GDPR - possibly the only actual link between any of the EU law around cookies and the GDPR - but in the end that regulation was never passed and it was formally abandoned earlier this year.
So for now rules about user consent for local data storage in the EU - and largely still in the UK - do exist but they derive from the ePrivacy Directive and they are widely misunderstood. And while there has been a lot of talk about changes to EU law that might improve the situation with the banners so far talk is all it has been.
Why can't those services show a link in their app to their page without Apple claiming it's owed 27% of the sale?
Even in the store, Apple charges 15% if your revenue is below $1 million and charges 15% for renewals after the first year.
Indeed. It took a court battle, and holding Apple in contempt of court, and perjury by one of Apple's executives before Apple was forced to do it (did it comply?).
Why not everywhere?
> Even in the store, Apple charges 15% if your revenue is below $1 million and charges 15% for renewals after the first year.
No, Apple was going to charge 27% on sales happening outside of the App Store, if linked in the app.
Also, you keep trying to diminish/dismiss this as if was no big deal.
Also, the latest court order was a victory for Apple, not for devs. Apple, again, can charge commission in external links, restrict language in those links etc.
But is that the chicken or the egg? Is it that surprising that when such an oppressively large margin is being extracted, the primary survivors are the things that are themselves scams? Normal businesses typically don't have 30% margins to begin with, much less have that much to spare for a extractive middleman.
Software has near 0 marginal costs unless you are dependent on a third party server side AI models (instead of on device models) or other API vendors. 15% (if you are making less than 1 million) is not the reason you aren’t making money on the App Store. That sane person wouldn’t be making money on the web no more than the indie artist isn’t making money on Spotify compared to Drake or Taylor Swift.
If Apple reduced in app commissions to 0, the same developers would still fail. Well known publishers have tried the pay $10 once for a premium game on iOS and users wouldn’t pay for it.
Many of those are things where the value of a single user is very low and then you need a significant audience just to earn an ordinary salary.
> Software has near 0 marginal costs
But it has significant development costs, and the fact that you're required to use Apple's store makes them even higher, because their restrictions are incompatible with free software licenses, which locks you out of even using LGPL code on iOS, much less anything else.
Apple's hardware has those fancy chips in it, right? Suppose you want to create a front end for Blender and run it on iOS. Your front end doesn't have to use the same license as Blender itself if it's a separate program, so you could charge for it. But Blender is GPL so you can't run it on iOS at all. Then you'd have to write Blender yourself, by which point you're talking something that would need a million a year in revenue, and a 30% deadweight loss could very well make the difference between viable and not.
It's also incredibly disheartening, because you do the work and take the risk and then if you actually succeed you know someone else is going to cut out a huge chunk of the revenue, which discourages people from making the attempt.
> Well known publishers have tried the pay $10 once for a premium game on iOS and users wouldn’t pay for it.
Which is kind of weird when they're empirically willing to do it on other platforms, right?
But that's what happens when you establish a reputation for being capricious while taking a large cut. Who wants to make a significant investment into a platform when the platform is eroding their profits and there is a non-trivial chance they could be arbitrarily cut off at any time with no recourse? At which point the users come to expect apps to be scummy and become disinclined to pay for them up front.
When you buy a table from IKEA, IKEA doesn't own it, and has no right to tell you which food you're allowed to eat on it.
- no native CalDAV support
- third party open-source DavX offers that, although it's hacky and the push support is even more experimental
- but, most importnatly, your Google account's calendar (which you need for Play Store) is still a default and any 3rd party app adding an event to your calendar will adds it to the Google one. You don't get to change the default calendar, you don't get to disable it!
- you ned to give Gemini full access to your Google Calendar (again) to get it to save your appointments or reminders. You can't use it with non-Google calendar.
None of these were an issue on iPhone, I was able to use my NextCloud instance to host all my events privately and securely, including with Siri.
I am actually super frustrated and find it odd that this is even legal in EU, because it definitely looks like protectionism.
That seems like a bug in Google's Calendar app. Can't you simply install a third party calendar app like Fossify Calendar and set it as the default for handling calendar intents?
I'll try your approach, though, and report back.
Apple Maps can be uninstalled, and many people rely on Google Maps. There are plenty of alternatives. I like how convenient the iOS APIs make it to choose alternatives. The Transit app can read the address information from my calendar (a caldav calendar self-hosted on Synology) which makes it really easy to navigate to appointments.
Re:privacy: https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/03/meta_pauses_android_t...
[1]: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-health-connect-usel...
The big difference is in what Apple won't let you do, like get your GPS location without telling Apple or install an app without telling Apple. It looks like Apple finally allowed changing the default navigation app this year, but only in Europe: https://www.androidpolice.com/make-google-maps-app-default-i.... If you want to change the default voice assistant, you still can't do that.
The defaults aren’t really relevant because they don’t come up. You can disable Siri and use the action button to use any other app as an assistant.
They have developed a Android app (available through different and aforementioned distribution channels, ofcourse), but they have one for iOS too!
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/organic-maps-offline-map/id156...
Droid - Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.organicmap...
Droid - Obtainium: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/wiki/Installing-O...
Droid - F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.organicmaps/
Presumably, they have a simpler way to tie the same ids together on iOS.
> The defaults aren’t really relevant because they don’t come up
If you ask your phone to navigate for you, you cannot use another app with better privacy. You have to use whatever Apple forces on you. The same with hotword-triggered assistants.
But yes, these are minor compared to the fact that you cannot get your GPS location at all in any app without telling Apple or the fact that you cannot install an app at all without telling Apple. These are egregious privacy violations done simply because Apple can.
And given all the privacy breaches Meta's engineers did manage to succesfully execute on iOS until now, given the sandbox restrictions, they are in fact pretty creative if you ask me.
Don't believe for a second you are safe from these fuckers on either Android or iOS.
We have an existence proof. In the US, any developer has been able to link out to their own payment scheme for awhile now without paying Apple a dime. That hasn’t solved a single problem for indie developers. It’s not the 15% cut - the same that every other marketplace has
It's rooted in the same source. Their rent-seeking creates a distribution monopoly to those customers, which they try to keep a strangle hold on because otherwise people would use alternatives to avoid the large cut, but then once they exist those same tentacles squeeze people in other ways too. Moreover, the effect is cumulative, so those costs layer on top of the revenue loss and exacerbate each other.
> In the US, any developer has been able to link out to their own payment scheme for awhile now without paying Apple a dime.
This is something that was forced on them by the law and then they do everything possible to make it an inconvenience. For example, where is the Paypal or Stripe app that already has the user's payment info and allows other apps to use that for in-app purchases without entering it or signing in again?
> the same that every other marketplace has
Epic Games Store is 0% up to a million dollars and 12% after instead of 15% and 30%, isn't it?
I am saying that if the indie devs didn’t have go pay Apple a dime, it wouldn’t matter. You still aren’t going to stand out and monetize compared to companies selling loot boxes and coins that make up 90% of App Store revenue. You will still have the same discovery problem, people’s unwillingness to pay money for apps on the App Store aside from games and the same race to the bottom.
Just like no matter what, the indie band playing at the local bar is not going to make money off of Spotify and all of the money is going to go to Taylor Swift and Drake.
1. Yes. Yes it can.
2. This was literally my first question you keep dancing around: "Why can't those services show a link in their app to their page without Apple claiming it's owed 27% of the sale?"
> You still aren’t going to stand out and monetize
What does this have to do with my question? Literally nothing.
But we've been at this twice already, and I am not inclined to go for a third round.
Adieu.
They get stored in a system table and you add accounts this way as well, right? This is also how DavX provides CalDAV support: it downloads the calendar and syncs it with the system tables.
In any case, at no point was I presented with an option to choose a default Calendar app or nowhere do I see a way to change that.