ericthehalfbee

"For years, Apple responded to competitive threats by imposing a series of 'Whack-A-Mole' contractual rules and restrictions that have allowed Apple to extract higher prices from consumers, impose higher fees on developers and creators, and to throttle competitive alternatives from rival technologies," the DOJ antitrust division chief Jonathan Kanter also said.

gatorguy said:

ericthehalfbee said:

gatorguy said:

ericthehalfbee said:

eeks the EU has done nothing about this. I’ve seen no investigation or even a suggestion of one. Yet this Epic ban apparently needed to be looked at immediately by the EU?

The fact nothing has been done about Apple’s rules suggests that Apple is, in fact, in compliance with the DMA and these rules are staying.

It's only been two days, not weeks, since the EU DMA rules went into effect. The commission announced in advance that March 7th was the day that active examinations of the gatekeepers compliance would begin.

 I fully expect a few knocks on doors, and a bit of fine-tuning from the affected big techs, preferably without fines being the driving reason for the requisite changes.

That’s quite the spin. There’s no stipulation that says the EU has to wait until the DMA comes into effect before they investigate any potential issues. Especially with the complaints from Epic & Spotify.

If the EU fine tunes the DMA it exposes them as the utter incompetent and idiotic lawmakers they truly are.

Spin? Why would the EU Commission investigate any company's compliance with a law that wasn't yet in place? As of March 7th, it is. Prior to that, none of the gatekeepers were obligated by law to change anything, and they had right up to midnight (I assume) on the day of the deadline to make any last-second changes they believed were required before authorities were legally tasked with verifying. 

You can’t be this stupid.

They would investigate because Apple announced their rules 6 weeks early, giving them plenty of time to review them.

Much better to talk to Apple and fine tune the rules BEFORE the DMA goes into effect then to have a bunch companies build their new third party stores around Apple’s rules and then have to change them later on. This is a lot of wasted effort for everyone.

The EU could warn Apple of non-compliance and if nothing changes they could hit Apple hard on day one. Given the tone people like Breton have when talking about Apple, I’m convinced there’s nothing they’d like better than to hit Apple hard on day one.

I think they DID have this conversation since Apple made a few last-minute changes to the terms (like the credit requirement). Which I predict means the rest of their conditions will stay.

Fred257 said:

I’ve been following Apple since 1997. Apple Insider I have been following since 1998. Apple is going to be fined on this one. The lawyers for Apple have made the wrong decision 

Bullshit. The DMA doesn’t have any language that deals with this scenario. This is contract law and it will have to be decided in a court.

Again for the people in the back: The DMA isn’t a blank cheque that says developers have 100% access to Apple or Google App stores and that Apple/Google can’t do anything about bad actors.

radarthekat said:

avon b7 said:

This is part of what the EU had to say:

"Today's decision concludes that Apple's anti-steering provisions amount to unfair trading conditions, in breach of Article 102(a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU'). These anti-steering provisions are neither necessary nor proportionate for the protection of Apple's commercial interests in relation to the App Store on Apple's smart mobile devices and negatively affect the interests of iOS users, who cannot make informed and effective decisions on where and how to purchase music streaming subscriptions for use on their device.

Apple's conduct, which lasted for almost ten years, may have led many iOS users to pay significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions because of the high commission fee imposed by Apple on developers and passed on to consumers in the form of higher subscription prices for the same service on the Apple App Store.

... "

Apple makes no reference to its anti-competitive behaviour in its statement and instead tries to put the spotlight on Spotify, its European nature and music streaming.

I’m curious, does Spotify discount its service by the amount of Apple’s commission when a customer pays directly through Spotify’s website?  

9secondkox2 said:

Apple did as asked. Done. 

They don’t have to give everything away. That’s counter to business, period. 

It’s not the EUs job to micromanage an American private sector company. 

They’d better be careful. Apple may decide to make a stronger reaction. Then life in Europe would suck pretty badly.  

I’m waiting for the US to retaliate. The DMA is so obviously biased against US companies (while leaving multi-billion dollar EU companies exempt).

I suggest going after German automakers. I used to work for BMW and they “serialize” components to vehicles in exactly the same manner Apple does with secure components. You can’t take parts from
used/wrecked BMWs and use them to repair other vehicles. New components have to be bought & installed through BMW dealers only.

Right to Repair is different than the DMA, but it’s still something the EU is also going to force companies like Apple to support. If Apple has to abide by Right to Repair then BMW, Mercedes and Audi damn well also have to abide. Especially considering the substantially higher cost to repair a vehicle vs a phone or laptop.