AppleZulu

foregoneconclusion said:

"I would think of it as unwise to say that the services are not safe to use, because that has nothing to do with the DMA," Vestager said about the warnings. "The DMA is there to open the market for other service providers to get to you and how your service provider of your operating system, how they will make sure that it is safe is for them to decide."

Uhhhhh...if the other service providers get to decide how "safe it is" then why wouldn't Apple be allowed to say there are risks? Vestager just admitted that the DMA doesn't have security standards. Didn't the EU previously claim that App Store users would have no idea that they could pay for things on the internet unless a message inside the app told them they could do it? But now Apple isn't allowed to communicate that the security standards will be different...which is definitely true according to Vestager herself.

Bingo.

Apple offers a number of consumer protection benefits for users of third-party apps downloaded through the App Store, and in-app subscriptions and purchases handled through the App Store. Apps are reviewed for compatibility and compliance with consumer data collection standards, including required transparency and permissions for collection and use of certain user data. In-app subscriptions can be stopped as easily as they are started. The list goes on. 

For third-party app stores, these things - by definition - will not be handled by Apple, and Apple can't guarantee that similar standards will be maintained by operators of third-party app stores. They not only should be allowed to communicate this, an actual consumer protection law should probably require that this be communicated.

As much as the EU seems to be actively pretending it's not the case, the primary reason that some app developers want to have access to the iOS platform outside the App Store, is specifically because they want to defy Apple's standards for security, privacy and consumer protections. They want to collect and sell user data and they want to implement in-app sales and subscription practices that don't meet Apple's standards. 

Tile had been out there for years with zero anti-stalking features. Then AirTags came on the market - with anti stalking protections - and Tile panicked, and added them to their devices. Soon after, Tile added a feature to their feature that lets their users pinky-promise they won’t use Tile for stalking (or at least won’t get caught), and then they can turn off the anti-stalking protections. 

How can they push back the date of something that's never going to happen?

"Hopefully Spotify will turn to Hi Res as the answer and serve all the music to everyone," [Young] wrote. "Spotify, you can do it! Really be #1 in all ways. You have the music and the listeners!!!! Start with a limited Hi res tier and build from there!"

Neil Young's quixotic crusade for audio sound quality has always unintentionally been kind of entertaining. I had a good laugh reading a profile interview when he was promoting his Pono player, and he said his favorite place to listen to music was in his '59 Lincoln Continental convertible. Even with its engine replaced by an electric motor, there's little chance even the most discerning audiophile would be able to distinguish lossless audio from anything but the most highly compressed, low-bitrate sources.

I do get and support his protest against Spotify's choice to bankroll a sloppy disinformation vector like Joe Rogan, so with that exclusive contract ending and availability of Rogan's nonsense going wide again, I'd agree with Young that this renders his Spotify boycott moot.

But then, in this quote above, Young misses the boat on achieving his dream for the spread of lossless audio. He says, "Start with a limited Hi res tier and build from there!" This strategy is exactly why lossless and spatial audio formats were going nowhere until Apple Music got into it. Making people pay extra to access the better-quality format dooms it to niche market fringes. (Adding to that the requirement for specialized hardware like Young's Pono player narrows the market even further.) This creates a negative-feedback death-spiral. It limits demand, which in turn limits incentives for producers artists and labels to make content available in those formats, which in turn frustrates the people who are paying extra for very limited content, etc. For instance, I tried and soon cancelled Tidal when they embraced Dolby Atmos before Apple did. There was very limited content available (with no sign of much more than a sparing trickle to come) and their interface for finding it was even worse. 

Inexplicably, this self-defeating approach remained, well, self-defeating until Apple Music made lossless and spatial audio formats available to its subscribers at no extra charge and available on hardware they already owned. There is definitely still a high-end audiophile market where people pay top-dollar for gear that produces real and often imagined next-level acoustically pristine audio content, but Apple is largely responsible for making better audio widely available to the rest of us.

Since Apple embraced lossless and spatial formats at no extra charge, available content has boomed. This surely benefits Spotify doing more, but it would still be dumb for them to charge a premium to access it. Why pay Spotify more, when you can get it from Apple for less? Why would Spotify invest in their own back-end hardware, software and bandwidth to accommodate it, when a premium tier limits their market for it? 

I guess you can lead a crazy horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

More generally, this should be yet another lesson on why pursuit of market share dominance isn’t necessarily a sound business practice.