smells like legally actionable monopolistic behavior. apple clearly needs to be broken up… when was the last time we did that?
That was literally the point of this ruling. The EU only has the power to enforce things in the EU and they can’t force Apple to act differently outside of it.
Bit the EU could still go nuclear and just refuse to let apple trade I the EU. It’s not an EU company and it doesn’t make products in the EU.
Financially it doesn’t care about apple being able to sell there
Great point.
This is why Americans have no consumer protections; they’re the ones fucking everyone.
They’re fucking themselves. In the EU the EU, not the US, is sovereign. Apple has to follow EU rules, but again, only with the EU.
Ugh… I mean, they could, but the fact is I guarentee you many members of the EU commission and parliament themselves use these products, and they are popular in the EU, just not as overwhelmingly so as in the US. Ultimately, that wouldn’t really fly in a democracy and, as much as I may hate apple, for good reasons.
Yeah, I don’t think they read the article… Sovereignty only applies, well, in the bloc or nation.
Probably like 15-20 years ago when Microsoft was forced to de-bundle IE with Windows.
Serious dumb question, how is it considered a monopoly? What forms the monopoly?
The company? If so, what is the proposal? Apple HW team is separate company from SW team? Apple phones and Apple computers are separated?
The app store? There’s only one Xbox store on the Xbox, one Nintendo shop on the switch or Wii. It wouldn’t make sense to require supporting competition on your hardware. Did N64 games work on the Sega Genesis?
What is constitutes the monopoly and what’s the proposed fix?
I’d say that forcing Apple to make it easy to install other operative systems in their hardware would be a good start. And yes, making firmware available for those.
If Apple were to be splitted, I’d separate the whole iPhone branch from the rest of the company.
The app store? There’s only one Xbox store on the Xbox, one Nintendo shop on the switch or Wii. It wouldn’t make sense to require supporting competition on your hardware. Did N64 games work on the Sega Genesis?
those had enough competitors and weren’t the richest companies in the world. Although if it was my decision, I’d force them to open the hardware up too and allow third party software not approved by the manufacturer.
People are paying for the hardware, they should own it and not be imposed artificial limitations.
Did N64 games work on the Sega Genesis?
No, but Playstation games did https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Bleemcast! And Sony sued them but failed
Here’s the section for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Bleemcast! is an independently developed commercial emulator by Bleem! that allows one to load and play PlayStation discs on the Sega Dreamcast. It is compatible with most Dreamcast controllers and steering wheels, and leverages the Dreamcast’s superior processing power for enhanced graphics. It was created by using the MIL-CD security hole found in the Dreamcast BIOS.
Good bot!
That’s a fucking great bot!
Indeed, never seen it do that trick before, very cool
This is so sad to read… It makes me so angry that even when they won several lawsuits, Sony could just drive them out of business by suing them some more, and threatening stores that wanted to sell their software.
Apple doesn’t have a monopoly they have a platform that a lot of other organisations (including Mozilla) depend on. The EU has legislated restrictions for any platform that is in that position.
They drew a line in the sand for what size a platform needs to be for this new legislation to apply and Xbox isn’t big enough.
It doesn’t, the poster just doesn’t like Apple (neither do I) and those are apparently magic words for “stop this company I don’t like.”
Allowing different markets seems like the only alternative to side loading/homebrew. It was easier to develop games back in the day when you didn’t have too grovel to the device company overlords, this regulation just takes us back to that (sort of).
Well, not really, because you could use android, and it commands 70% of the global market share
Also, the way the law is, you have to have both a monopoly & also be causing substantial harm to the public. I.e. you can have a monopoly if it’s really nice and more like a public utility. So after the Microsoft antitrust case (for basically same thing), it’s been very hard to justify breaking up tech companies or banks
If a company acquires its monopoly by using business acumen, innovation and superior products, it is regarded to be legal; if a firm achieves monopoly through predatory or exclusionary acts, then it leads to anti-trust concern
For example, business can defense that its business conducts bring merits for consumers
(Wikipedia)
What happened with Microsoft browser tie ins antitrust?
Ultimately, the Circuit Court overturned Jackson’s holding that Microsoft should be broken up as an illegal monopoly. However, the Circuit Court did not overturn Jackson’s findings of fact, and held that traditional antitrust analysis was not equipped to consider software-related practices like browser tie-ins
So in short, Apple’s legal / business strategy here is totally solid. Arguably helps users, defended by precedent, and doesn’t dominate market share. Of course they have to debate all this
if a firm achieves monopoly through predatory or exclusionary acts, then it leads to anti-trust concern
Hey, ChatGPT …?
Closed Ecosystem: Apple is known for its closed ecosystem, which can limit users’ choices. For instance, iOS users can only download apps from the App Store, and Apple tightly controls the app approval process.
Proprietary Connectors: Apple often uses proprietary connectors and cables, such as the Lightning port, which can be inconvenient for users who want more universal standards like USB-C.
Repairability Issues: Apple products are often criticized for being difficult to repair. For example, the company discourages third-party repairs and designs its products with components that are challenging to replace.
To be fair, USB-C didn’t exist when Lightning was introduced, and it was vastly superior to Micro-USB.
It doesn’t really have any reason to exist now…
Agreed with your other points though!
I have an old iPad that I try to reuse for another purpose and all the locks to stop me to keep using it make it such a pain in the butt, when the alternative is simply to enable developer mode on an Android tablet.
Thankfully I remembered when buying a laptop and skipped the very enticing M-series hardware, because in 5-7 years that thing is a brick destined for the landfill.
To be fair, USB-C didn’t exist when Lightning was introduced
Hmm, I wonder why that was?
Lightning is a proprietary computer bus and power connector, created and designed by Apple Inc. It was introduced on September 12, 2012
Design for the USB-C connector was initially developed in 2012 by Apple Inc. and Intel.
So Apple helped develop USB-C but failed to integrate it into their products for a decade. Now, why would they do that?
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)
Because it’s not a superior connector. Lightning is better as a purely charging port. It’s less fragile and doesn’t have a million competing implementations. One of the most frustrating things about USB-C is you can’t be sure if a cable is actually going to work.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Lightning is a proprietary computer bus and power connector, created and designed by Apple Inc. It was introduced on September 12, 2012, in conjunction with the iPhone 5, to replace its predecessor, the 30-pin dock connector. The Lightning connector is used to connect Apple mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, and iPods to host computers, external monitors, cameras, USB battery chargers, and other peripherals. Using 8 pins instead of 30, Lightning is much smaller than its predecessor. The Lightning connector is reversible.
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Its USB 2 speeds, so no
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Obviously it would be updated? Why would it be obvious when Apple hasn’t updated it at all, it was introduced in the Iphone 5 where it had USB 2 speeds, the Iphone 14 also has lightning connection and has… USB 2 speeds.
10 years and no update. Seems more like you liking Apple to mucb to think rather then us hating them too much.
Ah right, obviously you would change the core specs, how stupid of me
it feels better
that’s based on nothing. technically, it’s inferior in every way.
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So basically you would want every device to use a nonexistent updated lightning just because “it feels better”? Are you aware that lightning is a proprietary connector?
Additionally, USB-C debuted only two years later than lightning, so age is no excuse here.
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see, apples a hard one… i usually agree with breaking companies up, but most of apples value comes from their extremely tight integration. would that be possible if they were separate? i don’t know - i wouldn’t want to lose the value that i get from apple products
like, how would that work?
you’d usually split like hardware and software, but we have m series chips and macos working so damn well because they collaborated really closely
or iphone, mac, homepod? airdrop between devices, airplay, etc is pretty seamless and i’m not sure how well that’d work if they were separated… and again the m series chips are there because they planned for scaling up an iphone to mac size quite a while ago
retail maybe - that could be a good option, but honestly probably a drop in the ocean and wouldn’t solve anything
perhaps if they separated app store from the rest of apple, or music - like a services division? they’re not so tightly integrated (yet)
or perhaps they should just be separated and be made to deal with it - then we would hope they don’t get a bunch of shit business majors in to run them who don’t understand apple and want to make their turf as profitable as possible… but that always ends up happening eventuallly
you’d usually split like hardware and software, but we have m series chips and macos working so damn well because they collaborated really closely
You don’t need to split the OS, it’s the App store that needs to be split out, and web browser to be free to choose like in Windows and Android. Microsoft had a judgement on that when they were a monopoly, so they were legally required to offer alternative web browsers equal access on Windows.
And yet, Microsoft is trying to push Edge down windows users‘ throat…
It’s not quite as bad as effectively not allowing other browsers but it’s not far behind. Apple is less obnoxious than that on macOS. They won’t beg for you to use Safari
If only they’d cut the shit with iMessage
When does Apple beg you use iMessage?
At least with Edge it’s not disrupting the market by pushing an inferior rendering engine, like they did in the IE era. That by itself held the web back a good couple of years, and they were fined for abuse of their monopoly.
But at any rate, all of this is whataboutism - the issue is with Apple’s abuse of their position right now.
Oh yea, they absolutely do and I’m glad the EU is forcing them to open up. I personally prefer Safari, so I’m mainly looking forward to the sideloading but that didn’t mean that the rest of the world shouldn’t be able to install a real firefox or chrome.
In all honesty, I can understand the browser engine lockdown less than the appstore lockdown. There’s some point to the argument, that sideloading might open the door to viruses, etc. but the browser argument is based on battery life. It’s not 2010 anymore, phones can handle chrome…
Integration between products can be done well through standards and public apis. Apple just doesn’t expose this functionality to other developers because they want you stuck in their system because of the benefits of the integration between products.
apple fanboys are horrible.
“Tight integration” means the company’s software works well with their other software. It doesn’t mean locking out all others, whether they integrate well or not.
Just an opinion, but if they were forced to use open standards between products then it would still be easy to tightly integrate features between the various “companies”. The problem is this would also allow everyone else to play alongside them, meaning Apple would no longer have a monopoly on such things, and the open standards might even gasp be used by other operating systems. But what do I know about Apple products, they may already be using open standards?
If there’s any company that doesn’t need to be broken up, it’s Apple. They only really have 3 core functions: hardware, software, and cloud services. And the cloud services really only matter to people using their hardware and software.
A better approach for Apple specifically are pro-consumer regulations. Breaking them up seems unnecessary to me.
You seem to have forgotten that there were Safari and iTunes for Windows, and QuickTime player (for whatever reason everything was associated with that on our PC in my childhood, so I didn’t know it’s Apple) too.
There’s nothing in any of their services which would make them useless outside of the ecosystem, provided Apple doesn’t intentionally kill itself with behaving stupid.
Actually if that breakup happens, then maybe in like 10 years something decent may come out of it.
This argument is dumb, open up the specs, APIs, etc and allow integration with their products. There’s no reason only Apple should be able to write software for these products. The specification makes the product appear seamless, there’s no reason it couldn’t remain so if others developed or manufactured for the platform.
I’m fine with Apple retaining interoperability between their first party software products, they just need a way to bypass the walled garden. If they have sideloading (everywhere and without restrictions) and ideally also bootloader unlocking, they provide a sanctioned path around the walls of their ecosystem and now it’s up to the user to choose to leave that garden. If the user is comfortable there, they can stay. Trying to fuck over sideloading is the issue here. I’m fine with the App Store being restrictive if there’s a way around it, and simply sideloading an app shouldn’t break the rest of the OS’s capabilities.
separate the phone branch from the desktop computer branch. that’d be a good start.
I understand the logic behind not wanting to separate hardware and software, that’s the only selling point Apple has over any other manufacturer. So just make the iPhone a different company.
That’d ruin what makes Apple products so good. The fact is, people like Apple because everything is connected. It’s one of the largest draw points of apple and would only piss 90% of the users off for no tangible benefit to anyone else.
yep, you have great points. also everythings cloud-y, so no geographic lines to draw ala ma bell. not a ton of diversification.
theyre building a car though?
That doesn’t mean jack shit. Just because they have integration, doesn’t mean they get a free pass on this shit.
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There’s no monopoly. Use an Android.
I absolutely love how Mozilla has been calling out Apple, Google, and Microsoft. So good.
Sad thing is they don’t have enough pull to make people listen.
Well they recently got people to get scared of what car manufacturers want to do with all sensitive data they get access to, who knows
Yeah, normies went from IE straight to Chrome.
They’ll never admit when they were wrong.
They still gladly accept Google’s sweet money (while asking for donations). So brave of them! /s
Bluntly, where would Mozilla be without Google’s funding?
Gone, probably.
So while I agree that it is poisonous and there is something very wrong with Mozilla corporate structure, it is a necessary evil.
Who cares? Nobody needs Mozilla anyway.
You appear to be lost, corporate deepthroaters anonymous is down the hall on the left.
Get lost.
Tis you who seems lost
Get lost you too.
Isn’t it just for the default search engine which you change without any difficulty?
The point is, donations barely cover the “salary” of its president (7-something millions dollar) and funds allocated to dev dwindle each year. Which is plainly stated in their yearly reports. The google money is a large part of what makes it possible to do anything else than pay the board; the donations are the cherry on the cake at this point.
Just? You call someone out and still accept money from them? Highly hypocritical behavior, if you ask me.
Moreover, here it comes the cognitive dissonance of Mozilla’s fans: they say “the default search engine can be changed easily”, while a the same time they blame “Chrome/Edge being the default” for the low FF market share, when in reality installing a different app is easier for tech illiterates than changing the default search engine.
Doublethink can be amazing.
Your vitriol is pathetic and exhausting. Take all this energy you have and maybe advocate for what you think is a better browser rather than berating people. You may live in Spain and not be American, but your attitude and the way you present yourself, at least in comments, is glaringly American.
“I vehemently hate dancing, to the point I can get upset even if someone just suggests it to me.”
Holy shit, you lack the self control to keep composure at the fucking mention of dancing? I thoroughly pity your child.
Take your fuckin’ meds, dude. Get help.
Just block me, just as I’m going to do with you. Goodbye.
So brave!
Good advice. Bye!
Of course, they want to make it as complicated as possible so that people don’t actually do it.
This is why I support Linux and open source stuff whenever I can. Always used Firefox. Linux on the server and desktop. Doesn’t work for everyone but it’s the last free open thing we’ve got. What’s been great about Linux is now that basically everything is a Web app Linux is the perfect OS. But now we are dealing with bullshit browser wars. Uhg. Firefox will be the Linux if browsers in no time.
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Yeah I last booted windows consistently to play elden ring. I’m back now and playing other games in my library without issue. Proton has seen strides in improvement year over year. It’s amazing.
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I feel like of a group of dedicated Firefox engineers should fork the source code and start their own company.
If they would focus on adding really useful features at a rapid pace, people would be willing to pay for it.
Similiar to Kagi, if you make a really good software, you will get a group of dedicated people to support you.
Just a tech company without these super expensive CEOs that are not needed in a smaller company.
Servo is a fork of a Mozilla research project, it’s moved to the Linux foundation.
They are rebuilding a web engine built for the internet today, rather than adapting the older web engines of yesterday. Mozilla already uses some of their components in Firefox.
But they are only building a web engine, for other people to turn into browsers, we views, electron alternatives etc.
Aren’t there already a bunch of forks of Firefox already? How will one more help anything?
There is a difference between forks made by other people to tweak a project/do something specific for it, and the base project’s dev team moving away from whatever it became.
I’m usually not in favor of such fork because the reason for moving away is sometime dubious; some project just rename themselves to “start fresh and drop legacy compatibility issue”. But in the case of Firefox, Mozilla is the thing holding back features while adding bloat. Since it can’t change to a saner structure with more long-term sustainability plans, devs/engineers could move into a fork to not be bound to that anymore.
Of course it’s not that easy; for all the bad Mozilla (foundation or other, I don’t care much that they are two entities at this point since one is owned by the other) is doing to the actual software, they do provide salaries. At least, for now.
Lol. Firefox cost of development is $500 milions a year. Stop bs. No one can develop a browser anymore, even Microsoft. And the salary of CEO is not the problem.
Cost of development was 221 mio in 2022
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf
Same magnitude. We can not fork firefox with serious support
Yeah, I guess your point stands. But also, it’s 221 mio for Mozilla as a whole. Firefox might again be a fraction of this. While e.g. the Linux foundation has a lower budget, with all the contributed work hours of volunteers / corporations, a fork of Firefox is more realistic than the 500 mio make it out to be.
It is not the same software. A lot of drivers are developed externally for Linux. You can not do that with Firefox. Firefox is the main project of Mozilla
I don’t think your idea is bad but remember that the reason that small companies (like the one that makes arc) can maintain a browser is that they’re using chromium, and maintaining a browser engine is the hard part
How many people know why CEO’s get paid what they do?
A lot of it is they are actually worth more than me and you.
But the main thing that made CEO wages increase is that a law was passed for CEOs wages to be made public to discourage high wages. When that happened they competed against each other and the wage inflated.
Currently the negotiating position of businesses is far higher than that of workers because they are scared of not having a job/ don’t know what they are worth. The workers need public salaries. But like a lot of things in this world the workers vote against their own interests.
I’m not really sure how to fix that. But I’m starting to feel like someone really needs to try.
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I’m pretty sure any CEO will try squeeze as much money out of their company whether they are doing well or not. That’s irrelevant.
I actually talked to a (small) CEO last week he said all CEO’s either do it for ego or for money. That’s all it is to them.
But that’s not really the point you are making. The board chooses the rules of the game and its up to the CEO to win it, that’s their job. In this case the board wasn’t rewarding market share as that didn’t interest them, they were rewarding other metrics which Mozilla improved on. I don’t know anything about this company other than its my desktop browser but here is an article I just found
I’d take lunduke with a bowl of salt. That dude has had a hate boner against Mozilla for over a decade.
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I don’t understand. What makes you say that?
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Apple’s new rules in the European Union mean browsers like Firefox can finally use their own engines on iOS.
Although this may seem like a welcome change, Mozilla spokesperson Damiano DeMonte tells The Verge it’s “extremely disappointed” with the way things turned out.
“We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple’s proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps,” DeMonte says.
In iOS 17.4, Apple will no longer force browsers in the EU to use WebKit, the underlying engine that powers Safari.
“Apple’s proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari,” DeMonte adds.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called the new terms a “horror show,” while Spotify said the changes are a “farce.” Apple’s guidelines are still pending approval by the EU Commission.
The original article contains 285 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 50%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Bro legit question, why can’t all the app developers pull their app from apple store. Within no time apple will change its tune
Would you pay for the missed income then? Who would?
Apple only has this power because its users are a major source of income for developers.
The 30% fee developers keep complaining about has been in place from the start, so they really should have protested the app store at launch. Now they’re too dependent on app revenue for any kind of protest.
Apple recently became the number one smart phone manufacturer in the world (not just NA), and have 61% of the US market.
Nobody with a brain is pulling out of that.
Lmao i was calling apple out earlier in a thread for this exact reason!!!
Keep us informed!
Crapple at it again
Fuck Apple
More people should buy apple products. Let’s end humanity…woohooo I am going crazy living in this shitty world.
Is anyone really surprised by this?
Apple: hold my beer!
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Well, to be fair the EU can’t force Apple to change outside of its territories, and it makes sense that Apple prefers to maintain the status-quo untill other countries will follow EU example with similar regulations.
I can see Mozilla’s point there, but this scenario, even it it’s not optimal, still seems me a better one compared to the All-WebKit-Everywhere one. If Mozilla struggles to maintain two versions of Firefox for iOS, I’d say they can drop the useless WebKit version and just maintain the real version for EU only market (untill other markets will follow).
How many people are currently choosing FF in favour of Safari on iOS after all?
The problem is that Firefox desperately needs more users and even those who use the WebKit version are better than nothing. The WebKit version at least gets the name of Firefox out there.
I am a Firefox user both on desktop and on my android phone. And not only to support Mozilla in keeping the browser engine competition alive, but also because of some really good features that alternatives are missing (respectively Multi-Account containers on desktop and extensions on Android).
On my iPad, though, I tried using Firefox (even just to have bookmarks and history synced) but it’s really just a reskin of Safari with worse integration with the system and less features. Therefore I moved back to safari.
Why am I telling this? Because for any non tech-savvy user, if their first experience with FF is on their iPhone / iPad (with the WebKit version), they will probably not like it, and eventually associate in their mind “Firefox = bad browser”, preventing them to give it a try on their desktop. So, from a certain point of view, maybe getting rid of the WebKit version would help Mozilla gather some more users on the other platforms in the long term…
Fair point. Honestly had no idea as I’ve never owned any apple devices myself, but yeah that sucks and I’d probably also reluctantly stick to Safari in that case.
I used FF on my phone for a while, back when my old MacBook was stuck on a version of macOS that didn’t offer iCloud syncing. Firefox on both devices worked perfectly, but I always slightly preferred to use Safari wherever possible.
These days I keep FF on my Mac for if ever I need a second browser, and it’s the first thing I install if I ever need to setup a Windows VM.
