jpolster

Living in Germany and being an all Apple household, I still think that if this rule applies to Apple and apple stops iMessage in the EU, the impact is minimal. Apple has only 20 or 30% of the phone market here, and most people use WhatsApp or Signal or Telegram. I tried to live on iMessage for a while, but not being able to talk to 50% of my contacts, even customers, made me go back to WhatsApp (in addition to iMessage). So for the user, forcing the messengers to be available on other platforms is actually a good thing. Being able to use the well integrated iMessage is nicer than the alternatives on Apple, for sure. So good for the public, not so good for Apple. What should be more important to a governing institution like the EU? Oh, remember Internet Explorer, and what happened after the EU forced MS to open up Windows for other apps?

I think BMW did it pretty well right now. My new i4 integrates CarPlay wireless, there is wireless charging, maps appears in dashboard as well as heads-up display and what I really like, the individual iOS apps like music, podcast or whatever runs in CarPlay appear as individual apps in the BMW UI and can be selected directly there. So I think BMW found a good compromise, integrating it without giving up their own UI.

It's very nice that they redesigned the home app, and it really is much better. Now, if only it would work... Automations have gone bust with iOS 16, it really is a big mess, as you can see in many threads in the community. It really shows that this has never been tested properly as it is not a little "once in a while" bug but essentially makes austomations unusable, 

If you want to have a truly secure and multivendor home automation system, I can only recommend having a look at KNX. It's an industry standard with about 400 companies supporting it, and it works without any servers or cloud connection. If you would like to add Homekit compatibility, just add a small Thinka device, and you are up and running.

This really is pretty clever by the Russian government. It looks like they gave in to Apple but in reality they pretty much got what they want. By installing the apps they will call home and at least tell their masters that they now are installed plus all the info that Apple rules allow them to send over (and more)

If you don't install them the government still knows that you have not installed them as they know the owner of every phone through the SIM registration anyway. And I think that tells them at least as much about you ....