avon b7

dewme said:

avon b7 said:

rob53 said:

Apple owns its products not the EU. The EU has no right to dictate to Apple how its products operate. As I’ve said before, the EU has every right to build their own platforms but it’s obvious they don’t have the ability or talent to design and manufacture anything people, including those in EU countries, want. It’s time to boycott everything made in the EU but I’m not so sure there’s actually anything they make I really want. 

The EU has every right to level playing fields and counter consumer harm and the stifling of innovation.

That has long been the case. 

In the 'digital' world, the same ideas are applicable but new laws were needed specifically for the kind of cases explained here. 

Do you remember the world pre-pdf?

Interoperability is key to the points mentioned above and for progress. 

Mechanisms will have to be created and perfected but technology has the tendency to outpace legislation so these situations will persist until things get settled. 

This isn't an Apple thing. 

It's a EU thing! ICT carriers were forced to open up their technologies years ago and share their resources to a degree. 

This isn't like the US where for as long as I can remember (and for all I know, may still be the case) your place of residence was a limiting factor to which carriers you could choose from.

I can opt for a virtual carrier which will use the infrastructure of one of the bigger players. That allows for competition to exist. 

Left to its own devices, Apple does not allow for competition to exist. We know this and this is precisely why it is being forced to open up in certain areas (and not only the EU). 

Of course, Apple is free to pull out of the EU. So is Google and Meta et al. Will they? Nope because, as you seem unwilling to contemplate, any pull-out would be met with very swift movements to fill any gaps. 

You personally, may well be able to get by without EU products, but what would Apple's current supply chain do without ASML? 

So you would be okay if the United States demands that ASML open up its intellectual property and designs to American companies?

It's ironic that you bring up ASML specifically, as the idea of 'its' IP is part of the current geopolitical problem. The weaponisation of technology. 

The US is claiming the right to prevent ASML from going about its normal business on the grounds that part of its IP is 'US origin' and including in that claim, the idea that even if ASML bought a US company 100% it's IP is still US origin and the US has worldwide rights over its use. 

ASML is not happy. Its former and current CEO have made that clear. 

The EU is not attempting anything similar. It is requiring interoperability in certain fields and only within its borders. 

When I mentioned the situation with carriers, they were sharing their equipment functionality and basing it on standards. The standards that make interoperability possible in the first place.

That is happening across the EU with all its interoperability requirements. This year, for example, all bank transfers have to be 'instant'. The fintech sector had to work together to make it happen. The banking sector has gone through a lot of interoperability requirements and is far more critical than probably many other sectors. 

Apple doesn't make its IP available for others to take. It makes it available for others to use and it does so by providing APIs to gain access to that IP.

The problem, and it's been going on for years, is that things like messaging have been used for lock in. 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-confirms-imessage-locks-users-into-ios-and-putting-it-on-android-would-hurt-apple/

That is what the EU (and the DoJ) wants to change. The things that companies like Apple et al actively use to limit user choice, stifle innovation and limit competition.

And the EU is specifically targeting gatekeepers. Those with the power to implement those harmful decisions. 

rob53 said:

Apple owns its products not the EU. The EU has no right to dictate to Apple how its products operate. As I’ve said before, the EU has every right to build their own platforms but it’s obvious they don’t have the ability or talent to design and manufacture anything people, including those in EU countries, want. It’s time to boycott everything made in the EU but I’m not so sure there’s actually anything they make I really want. 

The EU has every right to level playing fields and counter consumer harm and the stifling of innovation.

That has long been the case. 

In the 'digital' world, the same ideas are applicable but new laws were needed specifically for the kind of cases explained here. 

Do you remember the world pre-pdf?

Interoperability is key to the points mentioned above and for progress. 

Mechanisms will have to be created and perfected but technology has the tendency to outpace legislation so these situations will persist until things get settled. 

This isn't an Apple thing. 

It's a EU thing! ICT carriers were forced to open up their technologies years ago and share their resources to a degree. 

This isn't like the US where for as long as I can remember (and for all I know, may still be the case) your place of residence was a limiting factor to which carriers you could choose from.

I can opt for a virtual carrier which will use the infrastructure of one of the bigger players. That allows for competition to exist. 

Left to its own devices, Apple does not allow for competition to exist. We know this and this is precisely why it is being forced to open up in certain areas (and not only the EU). 

Of course, Apple is free to pull out of the EU. So is Google and Meta et al. Will they? Nope because, as you seem unwilling to contemplate, any pull-out would be met with very swift movements to fill any gaps. 

You personally, may well be able to get by without EU products, but what would Apple's current supply chain do without ASML? 

More utter nonsense.

Just two days after agreeing to begin talks, the US was shooting itself in the foot again. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/19/china-us-trade-tariffs-chip-huawei.html

And amazingly the BIS was live updating the 'guidance' document on the web to alter the wording. Quite literally! 

Instead of drafting, checking, approving and then publishing the guidance they were modifying the file before the eyes of the onlooking world and, to this day, and this is utterly astonishing, they haven't corrected the spelling mistake on the chip list (which only includes three entries!). 

"Ascent"? 

https://www.bis.gov/media/1575

godofbiscuitssf said:

avon b7 said:

Chock_Mossley said:

MassiveAttack said:

He is right. Apple is not as innovative as Apple was before. 
Apple Intelligence = Apple Incompetence. 

But will Nothing still be around in 7 ~ 10 years? 
I dunno.

It’s not like EVERY OTHER tech company’s first attempts at AI haven’t been dumpsters fires. They held off on what they did, because they didn’t want a put a glue on pizza debacle. That said, I’m fine if they never release it. AI is a smoke show that isn’t going to get much better than it is now and it’s all based on stealing from others

You'd have to define 'dumpster fire'. 

Perplexity Pro has suited my needs very well. AI in language translation, NLP, NLG, image/video creation/manipulation is amazing and constantly improving. 

LLM's in industry are having a massive impact on almost everything they touch (with the huge exception of customer service Chatbots). 

Dumpster fire: out of control thievery and runaway hypocrisy by an industry that's overhyped itself into reversing the trends of more productivity per watt, literally increasing the heat content of the earth's atmosphere.

Overhyped, to a degree, for sure but a dumpster fire? No.

If AI vanished from our lives overnight we would all miss it and might even realise it was lurking in places we never thought it was being used. 

AI, for all its pitfalls, still has enough pros to outweigh the cons and that's right across the board. 

Marvin said:

avon b7 said:

"Apple's "good faith efforts to engage" with the European Commission."

I think this takes the biscuit.

It's fine for Apple to disagree with the EU but to 'comply' with a requirement that expressly goes against anti-steering tactics by imposing a seperate system that effectively imposes the same financial burden on developers under a different name is not engaging in good faith efforts.

Apple is really earning itself a bad name here. 

Apple is still entitled to a commission when a link is used.

A law that requires Apple to allow free linking to outside payments undermines the entire App Store business model.

This would be like a government deciding that Amazon is so big that nobody can realistically compete with them so they should be forced to allow people to list products on Amazon that link to their own stores without paying Amazon anything.

These arguments have been justified due to Apple having exclusive control of the platform but in the EU they already allowed 3rd party stores and they allow certain companies to operate exclusively controlled stores.

It's the biggest companies that are trying to take advantage of this. Microsoft owns Minecraft and Candy Crush, they could drop in-app purchases, link out to a Microsoft payment portal to topup coins in their accounts. Apple has to curate 1.5 billion customers and direct their traffic to Microsoft games without receiving anything in return. That's not a justified ruling.

If they want to make a fairer ruling to make the system more competitive like lower fees so be it but destroying their business model entirely is not the way to go about it and just serves as another example of technologically illiterate public officials wrecking businesses. They have no right to dictate to a company that they should offer a service to competing billion-dollar companies for free. It's high time the EU Commission had some 3rd party oversight because their interference in business is getting way out of control. Handling B2C issues is fair enough like data privacy concerns but they have no right to pick winners in B2B issues.

From the resolution:

"The New Business Terms do not comply with Article 5(4) of Regulation (EU)