Many thanks for your enquiries dated 29 January 2024 and 10 February 2024 and your interest in the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”).
Your questions concern the Commission's decision of 5 September 2023 designating Apple Inc. (“Apple”) as a gatekeeper under the DMA (see here for the public version of the decision).
The Commission’s designation decision is based on the evidence available to the Commission and submissions made by Apple taking into account the legal framework under the DMA. Regarding your questions, we note the following:
The Commission designated Apple’s operating system iOS. The Commission considers that Apple has provided sufficient facts and arguments to hold that iOS and iPadOS constitute each a distinct operating system core platform service, with only iOS meeting the quantitative thresholds for designation. However, the Commission has opened a market investigation in the qualitative designation of iPadOS. This investigation is currently ongoing. Should the Commission qualitatively designate iPadOS, it would be subject to the same obligations under the DMA as iOS.
The Commission designated Apple’s software application store App Store, which is currently offered on different Apple devices running on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS as a single core platform service, irrespective of the device on which it is used. This is because, based on the evidence in the file, the App Store is used for the same common purpose from both an end user and a business user perspective across all devices on which it is available, namely to intermediate the distribution of apps.
We hope this answers your questions. For any further information, including on the upcoming compliance phase, please visit the Commission’s DMA website under https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/
Unless the EU makes Apple get rid of the yearly cost per installation, any app store other than Apple's is limited by the inability to have free or freemium apps, giving them a substantial disadvantage in comparison.
I think this would need new legislation that would push software regulations further than they've been before.
Apple can allow apps to be installed outside their app store. The fee they are charging is likely related to accessing their APIs and tools for developing iOS apps. Apple would have to be forced to make these free.
Currently you could considerably make an iOS app without apple's tools and APIs. But it would require significant effort to develope/reverse engineer these tools to make the app. Effort that is outside of the scope of most modern app development.
To force apple to make the APIs and tools open would likely require additional legislation. Saying not only must the device allow third party distribution of apps, but apple must support these activities for free. This is significantly different from making apple allow third party apps. It puts on them a real cost (not potential loss like allowing third party app stores).
This isn't a problem for other systems because they actively invite people to develop and distribute their software for their system. But it would have implications for game consoles. Sony, MS and Nintendo would have to allow any potential developer access to their tools for free with little obligation.
I'm pretty sure Apple is missing a significant market share of consumers like myself who can't stand their anti-competitive practices. That's why I can only buy Android phones and tablets, until we get decent Linux ones.
Yep! I like their software, but I’m a developer and power-user, and the way their stuff is artificially locked down to protect their money-printing trust screws me over as both a developer and power-user. If they started opening things up - even if it’s “open” like MacOS… I’d be inclined to buy more stuff.
Android replaced most of the OS that people would consider Linux normally. They only kept the kernal. The kerbal is Linux, but when people talk about Linux OS they usually mean Linux/GNU.
If the requirements are the same as for iPhones, this change is entirely inconsequential, because Apple can just add so many hurdles to sideloading to make this infeasible.
I remember hearing something about requiring a multi million dollar deposit or something that made it infeasible for all but the largest of tech companies.
By all means. After Apple has painted themselves in a corner, when the legislation has been loophole proofed, that's when Apple gets hit in the face with the Brussels effect - like a big, floppy, dong slapped across Steve Apple's mouth in every country out there.
I'll do a dance for every country. I'll do a shimmy for Botswana, a conga for Japan, a shake for Sebia, etc, etc.
Slap! Other cheek. Slayap! Other cheek! And so on and so forth.
This does nothing at all for those with a slightly older "unsupported" device. They should have made Apple apply the same fixes to the last few whole number releases.
I've tried to look for some way to do this and found this. Not really what I'm looking for though (I have an old iPad 3 running iOS 9.3.5, and essentially useless) Does anyone have any links to help us out?
I've never gone down that route myself, but I have both an iPad 2 and iPad 3.
The iPad 2 is downgraded to iOS 6, making it significantly useful and faster, and this can be done with the Legacy iOS Kit. That being said I did this over a year ago when the App Store still worked on iOS 6, so you'd need to instead find IPAs and install them, which is definitely a more subpar process. I have a metric ton of old games on mine, as well as TwomonUSB so I can use it as a second monitor
My iPad 3 is downgraded to iOS 8, which is maybe a 15% speed improvement but it is more bearable than stock iOS 9, and the app store works as well as more apps like Spotify, Discord (with tweak), Telegram (editing Info.plist). Against the grain of what r/LegacyJailbreak would suggest, downgrading to iOS 8 is probably better than iOS 6.
This doesn't answer your Linux question, but if you wanted to get more use out of your iPad in the meantime I love having mine as a second monitor for my laptop (could also use VNC instead of TwomonUSB) and in general what I've said above makes them 100x more useful than on iOS 9.
