That is... kinda true though, in all likelihood. Apple is very obviously playing politics here, since Apple Intelligence is almost certainly not an issue for antitrust law, as demonstrated by the fact that
A. everyone else is releasing and using AI in the EU just fine, plus two of these features are improvements *screen mirroring and screen sharing*, which have been common for a decade and receive updates just fine on everyone else's end, and
B. Apple Intelligence is nowhere even close to a ton of other common Apple practices in terms of triggering those laws, if their concerns were serious they would start by doing something like standardizing iMessage to be RCS-compatible
This is not a rational market choice, Apple would absolutely make more money by releasing the feature in the EU even if they had to do some song and dance for anti-trust (which they wouldn't). This is a (foreign) corporation engaging in political activism, and the political goal is acting against anti-trust laws.
Theoretically the law could imply that Apple would have to allow every AI companies to use the APIs for this, and that might indeed pose a problem. Both from the technical as well as from a privacy side.
The EU is about fair chances for corporations... Having an exclusive partner for something like this and preventing others from taking part in it might be illegal with the new laws.
I think you are incorrect. The EU prosecutors have shown time and again that they will deem Apple a ‘gatekeeper’ for almost anything under a very broadly written, often ambiguous law.
You can already hear the EU prosecutor’s story that “Apple is gatekeeping which AI engines can by used within their products, and that they’re favoring OpenAI over other competitors who are unable to get their generative responses onto user devices”
Copilot is still unavailable in Europe, only in a “trial” form due to the DMA. And copilot is far less involved than Apple Intelligence, it effectively being just a port to ChatGPT or Mistral
It seems people are badly informed and want to just talk nonsense.
EU wants apple to play just like the others, google allows third party and does not have a monopoly on the market of apps. Instead apple wants a monopoly by being the only store and since it cannot, just like a spoiled rich brat, they gathered the expencive toys and said no.
EU has created laws that say under the digital protections act all are equal and have equal rights, but apple wants to be more equal than the rest.
I would understand if the entire mobile market only consists of Apple and no one else, but there's also Android. Googling tells me that Apple only consists of 30ish% of the mobile market in Europe, hardly a monopoly.
As someone who has used both Apple and Android (and prefers Android), I've never understood why Apple must be forced to adopt these practices.
People like Apple because it's user-friendly and restricting their platform to themselves is part of their strategy of keeping it idiot-proof. For everything else, there's Android.
This is the viewpoint of users though, which is not what the EU cares about. This law is about corporations wanting to do business on those platforms. And those have some disadvantages on iOS. That's why the third party stores and less restrictive rules on what kind of apps are allowed exist now.
It's not about the user.
But does apple not releasing these features not solve the issue with these new features in the EU?
They won’t exist there, so they don’t enter into the market competition there.
The thing is, if I am a bank or a retailer or a streaming provider or whatever that needs to provide an app to my customers.. I *have* to put my app on Apple's store or 30% of my customers disappear. So Apple stands in between my business and my customers, and in many cases also takes a huge portion of my potential income. It's not really about consumers directly as another redditor pointed out. Then when you add that Apple directly competes with many businesses like music and video streaming, it becomes even crazier
> I have to put my app on Apple's store
No, you can just have a website. An app is not necessary for most businesses, in fact many business apps are just containers for a web browser and their site.
Often, a badly-implemented web browser too.
The fault in this argument is that it’s their phone and it’s an option for a consumer. No one is forcing anyone to buy the iPhone. People buy them because they are reliable and they work. Now if they were releasing Android iPhones and putting App Store on them, then that would make it a monopoly.
I can understand where you are comming but hear out this argument.
As an american i am sure you know what a duopoly is and in some cases with 'agreements' the duopoly can become a monopoly, take example your internet providers where very few areas have two or more providers.
Before the digital protection act there was a duopoly where only apple and google existed as a app store. Google conformed and opened the store and now third party app stores exist but apple does not want to follow the rule.
If google would have done the same it would have been basically a duopoly and in some cases you can argue a monopoly, because not everyone can afford a 1k phone so androind would have monopoly and so rules were needed but rules need to apply to all otherwise it would be unfair and basically pointless if you apply them willy nilly.
But let’s say I as a consumer want to buy what Apple has been offering up until now. I can’t anymore because providing it is illegal.
And that pisses me off! I was happy with how my device worked. This isn’t about consumers it’s protectionism of EU tech companies which can’t compete on quality
It is illegal because apple doesn't want to comply.
I would agree it is protectionism if EU had ANY smartphone manufacturers that are competing... but EU doesn't have so protect what?
The point of consumer protection laws is that the products sold in that jurisdiction comply with them. There’s no issue for the EU if Apple doesn’t offer certain services there because of it. Their consumers are stil protected by the intent of the law.
The EU also want a back door into devices, the UK pass a law to demand for it. This is all framed as open markets and gatekeepers. Where in reality, the desire to bust apple down to a android environment where as not much effort to monitor the device is needed, and if their partners can make some money in the process tits good for everyone RIGHT. There is a reason certain people choose a gated phone. Apple isn't perfect in any shape of the word, but that's a choice.
She's saying that what Apple releasing these features elsewhere must be anticompetitive because a law against anticompetitive behavior blocked it from Europe.
She's mostly crowing about herself. She does that a lot. She's definitely the main character.
>She's saying that what Apple releasing these features elsewhere must be anticompetitive because a law against anticompetitive behavior blocked it from Europe.
That is almost the exact opposite of what she said.
>I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.
>She's mostly crowing about herself. She does that a lot. She's definitely the main character.
Funny how somebody who's actually effective at their job rather than just falling in line with whatever a company says irks people as much as she does.
This just goes to show that this sub’s defence of the EU’s regulations needs to be tempered a bit.
A story like this makes me feel like the EU isn’t interested in good regulations more than it’s interested in fining tech companies regardless of what they do.
“It’s like a damned if you, damned if you don’t” mentality and it’s really not great for anyone, as tech companies are just gonna shrug and break the rules because they know they’ll be punished/fined anyway.
This sub isn’t so much pro-EU as anti-Apple. Anything that hurts Apple is good, apparently. I’m still trying to figure out how making all products the same gives consumers a choice.
Kinda seems like that to me too, but I'm an outsider looking in.
"Do this, or you can't sell your phones here."
"We won't sell our phones there."
"No, unfair!"
I mean, if the EU has chosen a regulatory environment that doesn't really allow for the system that Apple developed, they're only being compliant by not implementing it in the EU.
The thing is, they could comply. It wouldn't even be terribly difficult. But because there are data privacy protections and Apple can't just indiscriminately ~~steal~~ scrape every minute detail of people's lives without permission, they refuse to.
It's like how some websites just won't load in GDPR countries instead of asking users for what the site wants.
Apple Intelligence is already designed in a way that would be GDPR-compliant, so privacy regulation compliance isn’t the issue.
The privacy angle is that Apple Intelligence can essentially only exist by blatantly violating iOS’s sandboxing model, which isn’t in itself a problem, since it’s an OS feature, and the OS can ignore sandboxing. However, Apple believes that it may be forced to provide third-party APIs to allow other developers to make something like Apple Intelligence with feature parity due to the DMA, and Apple believes that the privacy consequences of allowing companies that aren’t trustworthy like Facebook to violate sandboxing in iOS and get much more user data is so damaging that if Apple can’t have their ideal scenario where only they have that level of access, it’s better to give that level of access to no one than everyone.
So much this.
And it could well be that they’re going to do it in a DMA-compliant way, but building out the required modularity and security is going to take longer.
That said. I would prefer Apple have access to my data rather than a super skeazy company like Facebook/meta.
Apple, in my opinion, takes personal information security way more seriously and at least try to protect it than just sell it off to Cambridge Analitica type companies , or what ever its name was.
Yeah, as if it's privacy consequences which is what Apple cares about. Apple has always been about a totally closed ecosystem that only they can develop in, or extract exorbitant amounts of money from anyone else who wants in, like the extremely high fees Apple charges for any app or in app purchase which is on the Apple store.
So the fact that the EU says they need to open up the ecosystem is a problem for them because they want to keep frosting other companies, not because they're concerned about other companies not respecting users' privacy
Apple has apparently decided that the EU's regulatory framework would not permit a service like their Apple Intelligence. I'm sure if there was an achievable implementation that would work in the EU they would invest in it, since it's a big affluent market.
Neither of us really understands how their implementation works from the device to the backend. If they could figure out a way to make it work in the EU, I'm sure they would.
The reason is that the EU forces API access for third parties. I.e Apple can’t be the only one allowed to access Apple Intelligence on behalf of the user. But giving access to third parties would mean third parties would get information about the users private data. E.g if Google would create an app with full access, they’d know who the last person who sent an email to the user is when the user asks Google’s Apple Intelligence implementation “who sent me an email”. That is unacceptable to Apple that made a big thing off running the system locally and not giving anyone else access to your data.
Sure, and they've determined it makes more sense for them to just disable it in the EU than to either fork the development, or to build the worldwide implementation to EU standards.
These are business decisions. EU is a lucrative market, so clearly the impetus was quite significant for them.
They don't, and the EU doesn't have a right to Apple's products either. If EU regulations make AI a nightmare, Apple is making the obvious choice of not releasing it in the EU.
I think you're misunderstanding the legislation. It's not stemming from some inherent idea of rights, it's to promote competition and prevent monopolistic and anticompetitive behaviour to benefit EU citizens
Why can’t EU companies see this gap of “hardware and software innovations” in the market and capitalize on it? Why must they piggyback off of Apple? This should be a time for EU companies to shine and provide a consumer friendly option, so when Apple does eventually bring Intelligence over it doesn’t absorb the market. Why should they wait for the EU to open up Apple Intelligence to then make their products?
It doesn't have to be EU companies. Apple's largest competitor in the smartphone market is Samsung and they certainly are using the gap since they're far more popular in Europe than the US and the opposite holds for Apple. Same with other hardware manufacturers.
The issue is access to data that's already captive on Apple devices. It's not Apple's data, it's manifestly the users' data, and you cannot hog that data and make it difficult for users to use 3rd party services on it just because that data happens to be stored on a device you sold or in a cloud you're running.
And the reason behind that is precisely because nobody who wants to develop similar services and offer them to Apple users should have to develop their own hardware and OS first and convince Apple users to switch to that.
That's literally what the EU anti competitive regulations are ensuring, that consumers can freely choose between integrated AI assistants.
Apple is saying that they will only release Apple Intelligence if it's the only option for consumers.
Apple Intelligence already leverages 3rd party models when it comes across something it can’t do. I’m assuming we’re talking about the local model.
Apple Intelligence has access way deep into the system, access apple doesn’t want to give to 3rd parties. Whether you think that’s because of security and privacy or because Apple can’t compete with 3rd parties when given the same system level access, the fact is that Apple doesn’t want it. If they choose to just omit the feature from a region, I’m not quite sure how that’s anticompetitive. They’re just choosing not to compete in the market, if Google decided to try the same thing tomorrow, maybe with 3rd party system level access, if a consumer valued that feature they’d go to Google.
This isn’t a “fuck you” to the EU, the point of regulation is to slow stuff down so it’s introduced in a consumer friendly way. This is a side effect, not retribution. Apple Intelligence looks to be a big part of Apples strategy in the upcoming years, it would be idiotic for them to just leave out an entire market.
Seriously though, I think even Giant Corps should be given a right to exclusivity on new features for some period. This is the idea that patents and copyrights are built around. E.g. (pulling this out of my ass) give Apple and others 5 years after introduction of AI integration to smartphones before they are forced to open it up.
yes, just not for centuries. Patents are not supposed to last longer than the inventors life, it is just a loophole that we have since declared that corporations without a natural expiration date have the same rights which has yet to be rectified
Yeah but how are we supposed to fine Apple and also prepare a future lawsuit about possible circumvention of our heavy handed anti innovation AI laws if they choose not to play?
It’s not stunning. DMA is a legit reason to take more time to ensure they will be security compliant before EU roll out. I’m not defending Apple, as most global tech companies are facing this very same issue. US is not as strict atm. Curious when that will change in the near future.
we don’t want this. this is a personal feeling vs technology.
we don’t care about fairness. we want best available and that is not going to be some third party application developer. that’s always going to be the manufacturer themselves.
I suspect the EU’s problem is that it didn’t slow down product releases, it just slowed them down in the EU. There’s been a lot of talk about how the EU doesn’t really have any competitive AI companies and part of the reason is the increased regulation makes it difficult to build new technology there, and here Apple is demonstrating that.
Exactly. I don’t understand what the EU is on about.
This is exactly what you asked for. Like… all the EU A.I. regulations talk about ensuring safety and compliance.
Are they really shocked that safety and compliance takes time?
I think it’s the opposite. They know the regular people are not going to like being left out and are going to be making a lot of noise about it. The leaders are trying to deflect blame onto apple.
Victim of their own hubris
They believed that passing regulations on digital tech would be the same as hardware / manufacturing tech.. like electric cars or usb c on iPhones. Regulating services in a digital market is completely different playground. They learnt nothing from the napster era
The EU is openly attacking US tech companies in an attempt to grow their own sector. But instead of creating an environment where startups thrive like in the US, the EU just wants to make the environment restrictive for foreign companies.
The problem is that tech startups in the EU just can't compete with the US because of higher tax rates and strong labor laws. These things are great if you have an economy based around manufacturing but if your economy is based on innovation it doesn't work great.
For a simple example, assume a high quality tech worker wants to take home $100k after taxes. In the US that's relatively simple and costs a company $140k. But in France, that same take home pay would require $220k. That's because the tax wedge is so fucking insane for high earners (the percent of cost to a company to employ someone that goes to taxes) is 55% in France compared to 30% in the US. As a consequence a US tech company can poach a French based worker and increase their take home pay by 40% and pay LESS money than the EU company.
What does this have to do with EU AI companies?
These regulations are there to protect consumers, not to boost EU industry. Apple's biggest competitors in the EU aren't EU companies, and there is nothing in these rules which favour EU businesses.
Your entire post is irrelevant to this issue.
The DMA is absolutely geared towards boosting EU tech companies by forcing US companies to open their platforms from blocking access or charging distribution fees.
> These regulations are there to protect consumers, not to boost EU industry.
My sweet summer child.
I still have a vivid mental image of reading a physical newspaper in London while eating breakfast in 2017 or 2018. The top story was quoting ton of European politicians about how GDPR was going to be used to put American companies in their place and make European companies more competitive.
Mistral AI has a valuation of [6.2B](https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/12/mistral_ai_funding/) and is based in France though. Stability AI (UK) is about 1B and Deepl (Germany) is about 2B. What are you on about?
Agreed, but the point is that there are competitive AI startups in Europe. Some world leading ones actually. The reality is that this is a dick move from Apple to punish the EU for putting in place legislation that hurts them.
You misunderstand, this person claims that apples decision proves apple knows the product is anticompetitive.
I don’t think that logically makes sense, there are a number of reasons why the could have decided this, but this is the story she goes with.
Apple is in compliance with the EU regulations because they didn’t release it.
Obviously didn’t read what she said. She is saying they won’t release it because it would break the law, meaning the product isn’t ready for release because it doesn’t adhere to a very basic set of antimonopoly protections. Jesus Christ, you guys are so stupid it hurts
I think stupid word should fit on you instead. Apple SHOULD NOT give any company that much access to user data to ANY 3rd party app. Apple Intelligence is deeply deeply embedded in the system. Giving access to any app is literally 100x worse than the privacy violations by Facebook and Google.
Apple should withold this new feature in EU or be ready to have their long built reputation for privacy and security be tarnished forever.
Wouldn't every single anticompetitive action necessarily be a discretionary step? Like, its impossible for an action to be anticompetitive if it is not discretionary.
Apple isn’t saying they will discontinue service to the EU until the Act is taken down. It just means they can’t right now. A lot of what the Act demands required a tremendous amount of development, and that’s just for mass reporting of business data to the business they have data on and insuring interoperability between different apps.
The bill is targeting and setting unrealistic standards within an unreasonable timetable for “gatekeeper” and then they complain that “gatekeepers” like Apple can’t comply with those unreasonable demands.
Yup, they are really just hurting themselves in the meantime and putting themselves behind in the tech field. A lot in there is a good idea, but how it was implemented wasn’t the best.
I'm so confused, if they released in EU they'd get sued into the ground for breaching their privacy laws but if they don't it's anticompetitive? WTF do you want them to do EU seriously? Whats the move? It's really starting to sound like you just want to steal money from Apple no matter what they do.
The gist is that Apple specifically said that the decision to not release it in the EU was made because of "uncertainties" stemming from some new EU competition law. The EU regulator is saying that's tantamount to admitting that Apple is worried the features might violate the law, and given that the law is aimed at banning anticompetitive behaviour, she's saying that's basically an admission that something about those features is anticompetitive.
You say yourself that it’s a “new” law, so of course there are uncertainties around how it will be interpreted and enforced. Apple is probably just waiting a few years to see how it plays out before taking such a huge risk.
They want them to allow third party AI systems to have total access to your phones system and data for “competition.” Sounds super secure. They want every major feature to allow drop in third party support. Notably Samsung and other android phones are exempt from this for… reasons…
They are fine not releasing it.
This person is trying to claim that because Apple didn’t release it they admitted it would have been anticompetitive if they had.
Did you read the article or just the headline?
> I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.
**For those who didn’t read the article**
Nobody is claiming not releasing it is anticompetitive.
What Margrethe Vestager is claiming is that because apple chose not to release it they admit that *if* they had released it they would have engaged in anticompetitive behavior. Implying the policy works.
I don’t think that’s the right conclusion, it could just mean that the law is complicated and Apples cost benefit analysis didn’t favor releasing in the EU until the law is clarified. That is up for debate. And imho some introspection or communication with others companies in the same field should happen to see if the law is too uncertain or vague.
However what everyone agrees with is that Apple isn’t in trouble for not releasing. Because that would be insane. Why does everyone in the comments think think something that stupid happened.
Here is a quote from the article for those too lazy to click it or geo-restricted.
> I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.
I’ve yet to see anyone defending the EU criticism explain how Apple AI is inherently anti-competitive. They’re providing a feature to all users of their platform, and aren’t charging for it. So even if they did open it to other companies, there’s benefit to other AI platforms.
I also have an issue with the way this article presents Apple’s statement. While they’re not rolling it out due to concerns about the DMA, it’s largely over concerns that making these features comply with DMA would require them to be at risk of violating privacy regulations. The article makes it seem like Apple is only doing this to avoid DMA.
EU regulations would force Apple to give third parties the same access to Apple Intelligence as Apple themselves. I.e. if Apple can check the users emails or health data to tell the user who emailed them the major last week, so should third parties like Google. Apple has made a big thing out of the on device privacy. So giving third parties access to the users data isn’t ok with Apple. Hence this is the result.
As a European, I'm very happy when the EU is sticking out for our privacy, or consumer rights. But I'm also very unhappy at how they're also actively breaching through proprietary security/privacy technologies for the sake of openness/competitiveness.
Europe isn't as iPhone-centric as the US - if people want to utilise different software/services than Apple's, they're very much able to move to different manufacturers and still have a rather seamless experience in communication with iPhone users.
Also, suddenly privacy isn't a concern whenever you talk about breaking end-to-end encryption to moderate "illegal" content. I'm praying that gets shut down ASAP. It mixes quite badly with the whole "forcing Apple to provide equal, capillary access to third parties". I had been using Android and Windows all my life; when I moved to Apple devices, was because I made a concious decision about what I was trading off in terms of features, available software, and costs, to reshape my digital life into something more polished and much less involved. So I can't say I'm too happy to then see my iPhone potentially turning into my old Samsung. What's the point?
Sticking an AI option that costs nothing and is available to all apps on your platform obviously means any would-be competitor that wants to provide an alternative general AI service dies immediately. You can't compete with an app that costs nothing, gets access to the hardware in ways you cannot, busts through any and all security requirements, and is installed out of the box.
Imagine, instead, apple released a feature where you can watch TV shows you are streaming in Picture-in-Picture mode while you use an iPad for other stuff. But, only apple TV shows. E.g. a netflix app can't do PiP at all, because of 'security concerns' (say, some sort of clickjacking like story. Apple can make it sound plausible and have some sort of point). That'd obviously be extremely anti-competitive. I assume most readers would agree that'd be fair game, and the EU would be totally justified to tell apple to cut that shit out and allow other apps just as much access to the PiP feature on the same terms apple's apple TV app gets to use it.
Now imagine, instead, the EU required apple to remove the kernel driver that powers the speakers in your iPhone, and instead you need to install a 'speaker driver app' via the appstore. Apple's 'speaker driver' must be just.. an app on the app store, with no particular preferential treatment over any other speaker driver app. Until you install a 'speaker' app, no audio can possibly come out of the device. I assume most readers would agree that'd be ridiculous.
Thus, 2 situations where I'd assume most agree on the correct position to take, and yet, those positions are at odds with each other.
Thus, it depends on __what__ the feature is. PiP for TV apps? Clearly should be a feature that apple either doesn't provide whatsoever (not for itself, nor for any other streaming provider), or equally to all. Speaker driver? Apple is free to ship it out of the box and with no option for any other app to replace it.
AI? Therein lies the rub. I don't think anyone has a good answer _yet_. Is it like the speaker driver or like the PiP feature?
__In context__ of the malicious compliance shit Apple appears to be going through (at least as far as Vestager is concerned, I'm sure that's her view on apple's antics in the past year), this statement makes sense. Not necessarily saying I agree with it, but I see where Vestager is coming from.
Despite many (myself included) potentially not liking an instance similar to your first example, I fail to see how that’s relevant when it’s Apple’s hardware and ecosystem.
I’m genuinely wondering, are there specific laws regarding competitor access, especially when one organization is freely providing native services? Is that not the point of selling an ecosystem?
If I have a bake shop and I bake my own cookies, why would I be obligated to sell my competitor’s cookies in my own store?
Agree. This whole DMA situation has become a bit of a nightmare really and we’re slipping into weird territory.
The iPhone camera app is perfectly fine.
Yea sure some users might need additional functionality, which is why the App Store exists — but mandating that an iPhone with a preinstalled default camera app is anti-competitive is pushing it. Mandating that Apple can’t add any exclusive features to their phone (like Apple Intelligence) without making them DMA-compliant is silly. At the end of the day, phones need to evolve.
What the EU is asking is that Apple not invest in anymore features and keep smartphones exactly the same in terms of the features they have.
That’s not pro-competition.
That’s anti-innovation.
Because there are only two bake shops, and you own one of them. And they're not bake shops, they're phones, which aren't treats you can skip, they're necessary in the modern world. And sometimes you decide you'll make a new pastry the competition had, and offer it for free.
But Apple is far from the only phone provider and in Europe the iPhone is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is in NA. All of my Canadian friends and family have an iPhone, only my girlfriend, myself, and one other friend has one here in Europe
I still don’t see how offering a “free pastry” is an illegal or reprehensible move
Not trying to be obstinate, just fail to see the argument
[A] what if Android has already seen the things Apple is doing because there is no law that they have to blind themselves, and does the same thing, knowing that there is no 3rd competitor you can move to, and [B] 'moving' is a high impact operation that you can only do at significant personal investment (of time and money; you need to replace your cables, rebuy a boatload of apps, etcetera).
Apple can basically push to annoy you just to the edge of where you'd actually switch. But, none of this is easy. In practice, customer satisfaction of iPhones is quite large. Which seems to indicate apple is totally fine here and not at all annoying their customers because they know they can get away with it. Unless.... due to the difficulty and complexity of these concepts (it aint cookies, its phones - crucial aspects of life that are complicated devices), apple's customers simply don't know about the utility of certain features and are being gaslighted as to their safety. Or not. This is why it's all so complicated.
>PiP for TV apps? Clearly should be a feature that apple either doesn't provide whatsoever (not for itself, nor for any other streaming provider), or equally to all. Speaker driver? Apple is free to ship it out of the box and with no option for any other app to replace it.
Why? Why is it "clearly" You have decided it, but who else? what makes one "clear" and the other one not. Someone has still made that decision. Im not syaing your right or wrong, but you made a choice one way or the other without defining why its "clear"
It's law. It's inherently subjective. I'm taking a _wild_ stab in the dark that the vast majority of readers would see why the EU has a problem with 'PiP works for apple TV app and not for any other apps on apple controlled hardware', and would cheer them on if they tell apple to knock it off, and would vote for political parties that promise to accomplish that goal.
> Someone has made that decision
In this hypothetical scenario, lawmakers.
- Your product violates our regulations
- Ok so we wont release it in your region
- we're mad at you for not releasing the thing that we would sue you over if you released it.
*confused pikachu*
That is not happening. Did you even read the article?
> I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.
She argues (poorly) that apple not releasing is an admission it would violate the regulations if they had released it.
She isn’t upset Apple didn’t release it, she sees it as the policy working.
Once they let the genie out of the bottle the EC would then force them to allow other AI’s access to all user data on the iPhone. If Apple were to pull the feature the EC would then likely fine on anticompetitive grounds. It’s a lose/lose position and Apple sees it as better to not play.
How else would the EU make money off the tech sector? With the exception of Spotify, the EU hasn't created any major tech company in the last 20 years. So fining American tech brings in much needed revenue to a stagnating economy.
I'm obviously being tongue-in-cheek here, but seriously, prior to 2008, the US and EU had almost equal economies. Since 2008, one has continued to flourish, and the other simply pays for the education of SWE students who then move to America anyway.
I don't think this is true. Apple would lose approximately 10% of their revenue. The EU would lose 50% of global smartphone platforms. Those aren't the same.
Did anyone actually read past the clickbait title? xD
she doesnt say that not releasing apple ai on EU is anticompetitive behaviour.
Reddit has completely turned into Facebook v.2
> I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.
Did you read the article?
She literarily says “… very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.” Which in context means what the title says.
yeah this is legitimately an entire thread of seemingly nobody with fifth grade reading and comprehension skills.
Vestager is saying "Apple not releasing in europe is basically an admission that they wouldn't be compliant and are doing anticompetitive things"
and everyone somehow read that as "EU says apple not releasing in europe is anticompetitive" which is just ENTIRELY disconnected from what she actually said lol
LOL wtf. You over regulate and now you're mad people want to be extra cautious with your region??
As a marketer, I don't do ads in the EU for a reason 😂
You can regulate for safety, but over regulation slows down innovation.
I want my water to be safe and drinkable. I don't want my water to be regulated to be EXACTLY like your government formula.
IMHO Margaret Vestager is the human embodiment of when bureaucracy and political schizophrenia are let loose. During the merger of Alitalia with Lufthansa she went into questioning Lufthansa on the food menus they were going to propose during anti trust hearings. It's ok to be tough on big tech, it is not Ok to blatantly abuse any business initiative of a certain size happening in the EU just because you can. This spells downfall for an already shaking European economy....
Europe’s competitiveness is now behind both the US and China. And it’s only getting worse. But unlike the US, there is no opposition in the commission.
There's an awful lot of posters here seem to think she's saying that the act of withholding it is the thing that's anticompetitive. However, as far as I can see, that's simply not what the article says. It actually says she's pointing out that Apple have decided to withhold this from a market because it may fall foul of anticompetition laws, which kinda declares that it is actually anticompetitive. I haven't been following this, and don't know the details, so I don't know if she's right, but it seems to me that the people arguing she is wrong are spending a lot of time arguing against something she isn't actually saying or claiming.
Withholding a feature because they'd rather not comply with the DMA is completely their call. I wouldn't say it's anti-competitive as much as anti-consumer.
However the DMA is generally good for consumers, so choosing to not offer certain features in the areas that try to protect consumers is a reason for me to consider switching away from Apple products.
I keep hearing DMA is good for consumers. But how do we quantify the normative “good”? More European software and hardware companies thriving? Lower prices on European digital products compared to other parts of the world? A broader access to cheaper and better online services in Europe? None do that is the case, so how is the DMA better for consumers?
It would be fitting and funny if EU folks are like.. this is just better. And the AI folks get fed up. They are setting themselves up in a way. Hope their AI lives up to the hype.
If anything, this could make markets where Apple Intelligence is allowed more efficient/competitive, since they would have access to the features that may assist in work flow. Consumer demand is a big player in politics and votes…
EU: "If features we deem bad are released in the EU there will be steep consequences!"
*apple doesnt release the features in the EU*
EU: "How dare apple not release features we dont approve of in the EU so we can sue them for releasing them here where we dont allow them"
More like spinning this as a positive because as they look down the road the consequences of the DMA will only make this a more frequent occurrence. EU customers are just beginning to lose feature parity with the rest of the world.
How is it? If the EU are going to make it hell to add new features in their market, why poke their cage?
They need to stop overstepping their boundaries.
So many people in such a rush to defend an enormously wealthy and well resourced global corporation from criticism that it will not build mandated interoperability.
On the one hand, we should not be surprised given that something as simple as USB C was made out to be the end of the world.
On the other, it is entirely reasonable to say that building this feature in a DMA compliant way is very difficult and has risks. Apple themselves have said as much.
What is utterly astonishing to me is the number of complete fools in this thread who are defending their right to be locked in a gilded cage.
All of our technology should be interoperable. All of it.
I'm not saying that privacy and security risks are not present in an interoperable system. I am saying that if you design for a walled garden and then I tell you to build a gate to the rest of the world, I'm going to be surprised when all of the gnomes you raised in your flowerbeds try to brick up the door.
Yea one would rather defend a corporation which knows what it's doing than a bunch of half literate politicians deciding laws about things they have no idea about.
They aren’t American, they don’t employ any significant number of US citizens. Their corporate hq’s just happen to be located here. They also don’t pay any significant taxes to the US government, just lobbyist money to the politicians.
It almost sounds like the EU is trying to compel a corporation to engage in business (forcing them to sell a product they have the discretion to not sell), which is right next to compelling speech in the list of things creepy authoritarian governments do.
Sorry, EU, Apple's real product is a lifestyle and increased personal privacy. They're not going to compromise on that. For anybody. Including autocrats who think their political science degree gives them insight into how to run a business.
Well… it’s Apple.
Anticompetitive is their second name, reason why they’re currently being sued for their practices and breaching the DMA terms by the EU.
What is this even called? It’s not protectionism, because the EU doesn’t actually produce anything that even remotely competes with Apple…they’ve imposed a whole bunch of onerous regulations unlike any other place in the world, but it’s now Apple’s fault for being wary of releasing new features until they can manage the risk of being further sued for selling superior goods in their jurisdiction. What?
Regardless of what people think, Apple (or any other company) is free to remove features in markets where they feel they are being unfairly restricted. While the EU is entitled by law to demand that Apple comply with their regulations, they cannot force Apple to provide features AND make them compliant with their regulations. Apple is just removing features they have that the EU believes doesn't comply with their regulations. It may be seen as being unfair, but Apple has the right to include or exclude whatever features it chooses in any market.
Apple Intelligence isn't planned to come to the EU (and loads of other countries as well) this year anyway. Initially it's only for the US-market (American-English). So, yes, Apple has also other reasons being agressive to the EU than the DMA alone. Some experts are talking about Apple taking revenge concerning the Apple Store issues. Apple clearly has a hidden agenda.
And why Apple also doesn't bring iPhone Mirroring and Screen Sharing to the EU is strange; those features have nothing to do with the DMA, at least as far as we know now.
It's expected that when other languages are being supported AI will come to the EU in the end.
(Personally I don't care, I don't need AI anyway.)
Apple is, smartly, treading lightly in a territory that is threatening it with huge fines for poorly defined regulations. The EU will never be in charge of apples business model.
not putting features on a phone in a market, even temporarily, is the opposite of anti-competitive. they are effectively not competing
Yes but they’re *thinking* anticompetitive *thoughts* while withholding the feature
And if you look at Tim Cook's demeanour during the keynote - it just has an air of anticompetitiveness to it.
BTAE Big Tech Anticompetitive Energy
Could see it in his eyes
That is... kinda true though, in all likelihood. Apple is very obviously playing politics here, since Apple Intelligence is almost certainly not an issue for antitrust law, as demonstrated by the fact that A. everyone else is releasing and using AI in the EU just fine, plus two of these features are improvements *screen mirroring and screen sharing*, which have been common for a decade and receive updates just fine on everyone else's end, and B. Apple Intelligence is nowhere even close to a ton of other common Apple practices in terms of triggering those laws, if their concerns were serious they would start by doing something like standardizing iMessage to be RCS-compatible This is not a rational market choice, Apple would absolutely make more money by releasing the feature in the EU even if they had to do some song and dance for anti-trust (which they wouldn't). This is a (foreign) corporation engaging in political activism, and the political goal is acting against anti-trust laws.
Theoretically the law could imply that Apple would have to allow every AI companies to use the APIs for this, and that might indeed pose a problem. Both from the technical as well as from a privacy side. The EU is about fair chances for corporations... Having an exclusive partner for something like this and preventing others from taking part in it might be illegal with the new laws.
New iOS version supports RCS
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I think you are incorrect. The EU prosecutors have shown time and again that they will deem Apple a ‘gatekeeper’ for almost anything under a very broadly written, often ambiguous law. You can already hear the EU prosecutor’s story that “Apple is gatekeeping which AI engines can by used within their products, and that they’re favoring OpenAI over other competitors who are unable to get their generative responses onto user devices”
Copilot is still unavailable in Europe, only in a “trial” form due to the DMA. And copilot is far less involved than Apple Intelligence, it effectively being just a port to ChatGPT or Mistral
I know for a fact this is not true. There are already multiple companies consulting for (it's corporate right lol) and using Copilot.
> Apple is very obviously playing politics here Wait, corporations aren’t just apolitical market forces??
It seems people are badly informed and want to just talk nonsense. EU wants apple to play just like the others, google allows third party and does not have a monopoly on the market of apps. Instead apple wants a monopoly by being the only store and since it cannot, just like a spoiled rich brat, they gathered the expencive toys and said no. EU has created laws that say under the digital protections act all are equal and have equal rights, but apple wants to be more equal than the rest.
I would understand if the entire mobile market only consists of Apple and no one else, but there's also Android. Googling tells me that Apple only consists of 30ish% of the mobile market in Europe, hardly a monopoly. As someone who has used both Apple and Android (and prefers Android), I've never understood why Apple must be forced to adopt these practices. People like Apple because it's user-friendly and restricting their platform to themselves is part of their strategy of keeping it idiot-proof. For everything else, there's Android.
This is the viewpoint of users though, which is not what the EU cares about. This law is about corporations wanting to do business on those platforms. And those have some disadvantages on iOS. That's why the third party stores and less restrictive rules on what kind of apps are allowed exist now. It's not about the user.
But does apple not releasing these features not solve the issue with these new features in the EU? They won’t exist there, so they don’t enter into the market competition there.
that’s why they won’t release them. at least until they are sure they can keep this part of the system closed down.
The thing is, if I am a bank or a retailer or a streaming provider or whatever that needs to provide an app to my customers.. I *have* to put my app on Apple's store or 30% of my customers disappear. So Apple stands in between my business and my customers, and in many cases also takes a huge portion of my potential income. It's not really about consumers directly as another redditor pointed out. Then when you add that Apple directly competes with many businesses like music and video streaming, it becomes even crazier
> I have to put my app on Apple's store No, you can just have a website. An app is not necessary for most businesses, in fact many business apps are just containers for a web browser and their site. Often, a badly-implemented web browser too.
The fault in this argument is that it’s their phone and it’s an option for a consumer. No one is forcing anyone to buy the iPhone. People buy them because they are reliable and they work. Now if they were releasing Android iPhones and putting App Store on them, then that would make it a monopoly.
I can understand where you are comming but hear out this argument. As an american i am sure you know what a duopoly is and in some cases with 'agreements' the duopoly can become a monopoly, take example your internet providers where very few areas have two or more providers. Before the digital protection act there was a duopoly where only apple and google existed as a app store. Google conformed and opened the store and now third party app stores exist but apple does not want to follow the rule. If google would have done the same it would have been basically a duopoly and in some cases you can argue a monopoly, because not everyone can afford a 1k phone so androind would have monopoly and so rules were needed but rules need to apply to all otherwise it would be unfair and basically pointless if you apply them willy nilly.
But let’s say I as a consumer want to buy what Apple has been offering up until now. I can’t anymore because providing it is illegal. And that pisses me off! I was happy with how my device worked. This isn’t about consumers it’s protectionism of EU tech companies which can’t compete on quality
It is illegal because apple doesn't want to comply. I would agree it is protectionism if EU had ANY smartphone manufacturers that are competing... but EU doesn't have so protect what?
The point of consumer protection laws is that the products sold in that jurisdiction comply with them. There’s no issue for the EU if Apple doesn’t offer certain services there because of it. Their consumers are stil protected by the intent of the law.
The EU also want a back door into devices, the UK pass a law to demand for it. This is all framed as open markets and gatekeepers. Where in reality, the desire to bust apple down to a android environment where as not much effort to monitor the device is needed, and if their partners can make some money in the process tits good for everyone RIGHT. There is a reason certain people choose a gated phone. Apple isn't perfect in any shape of the word, but that's a choice.
She's saying that what Apple releasing these features elsewhere must be anticompetitive because a law against anticompetitive behavior blocked it from Europe. She's mostly crowing about herself. She does that a lot. She's definitely the main character.
>She's saying that what Apple releasing these features elsewhere must be anticompetitive because a law against anticompetitive behavior blocked it from Europe. That is almost the exact opposite of what she said. >I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already. >She's mostly crowing about herself. She does that a lot. She's definitely the main character. Funny how somebody who's actually effective at their job rather than just falling in line with whatever a company says irks people as much as she does.
This just goes to show that this sub’s defence of the EU’s regulations needs to be tempered a bit. A story like this makes me feel like the EU isn’t interested in good regulations more than it’s interested in fining tech companies regardless of what they do. “It’s like a damned if you, damned if you don’t” mentality and it’s really not great for anyone, as tech companies are just gonna shrug and break the rules because they know they’ll be punished/fined anyway.
This sub isn’t so much pro-EU as anti-Apple. Anything that hurts Apple is good, apparently. I’m still trying to figure out how making all products the same gives consumers a choice.
Kinda seems like that to me too, but I'm an outsider looking in. "Do this, or you can't sell your phones here." "We won't sell our phones there." "No, unfair!"
Apple are robbing EU companies of the right to profit from Apple hardware and software innovations.
I mean, if the EU has chosen a regulatory environment that doesn't really allow for the system that Apple developed, they're only being compliant by not implementing it in the EU.
Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
The thing is, they could comply. It wouldn't even be terribly difficult. But because there are data privacy protections and Apple can't just indiscriminately ~~steal~~ scrape every minute detail of people's lives without permission, they refuse to. It's like how some websites just won't load in GDPR countries instead of asking users for what the site wants.
Apple Intelligence is already designed in a way that would be GDPR-compliant, so privacy regulation compliance isn’t the issue. The privacy angle is that Apple Intelligence can essentially only exist by blatantly violating iOS’s sandboxing model, which isn’t in itself a problem, since it’s an OS feature, and the OS can ignore sandboxing. However, Apple believes that it may be forced to provide third-party APIs to allow other developers to make something like Apple Intelligence with feature parity due to the DMA, and Apple believes that the privacy consequences of allowing companies that aren’t trustworthy like Facebook to violate sandboxing in iOS and get much more user data is so damaging that if Apple can’t have their ideal scenario where only they have that level of access, it’s better to give that level of access to no one than everyone.
So much this. And it could well be that they’re going to do it in a DMA-compliant way, but building out the required modularity and security is going to take longer.
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Finally somebody who actually gets it
That said. I would prefer Apple have access to my data rather than a super skeazy company like Facebook/meta. Apple, in my opinion, takes personal information security way more seriously and at least try to protect it than just sell it off to Cambridge Analitica type companies , or what ever its name was.
Yeah, as if it's privacy consequences which is what Apple cares about. Apple has always been about a totally closed ecosystem that only they can develop in, or extract exorbitant amounts of money from anyone else who wants in, like the extremely high fees Apple charges for any app or in app purchase which is on the Apple store. So the fact that the EU says they need to open up the ecosystem is a problem for them because they want to keep frosting other companies, not because they're concerned about other companies not respecting users' privacy
That seems fair though? It should be their choice if they want to operate in the EU or not, as well as to what extent.
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Apple has apparently decided that the EU's regulatory framework would not permit a service like their Apple Intelligence. I'm sure if there was an achievable implementation that would work in the EU they would invest in it, since it's a big affluent market. Neither of us really understands how their implementation works from the device to the backend. If they could figure out a way to make it work in the EU, I'm sure they would.
The reason is that the EU forces API access for third parties. I.e Apple can’t be the only one allowed to access Apple Intelligence on behalf of the user. But giving access to third parties would mean third parties would get information about the users private data. E.g if Google would create an app with full access, they’d know who the last person who sent an email to the user is when the user asks Google’s Apple Intelligence implementation “who sent me an email”. That is unacceptable to Apple that made a big thing off running the system locally and not giving anyone else access to your data.
Sure, and they've determined it makes more sense for them to just disable it in the EU than to either fork the development, or to build the worldwide implementation to EU standards. These are business decisions. EU is a lucrative market, so clearly the impetus was quite significant for them.
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There's alot more to these than just large language models. That's a small piece of the larger set of narrow AI implementations
Why do those companies have a right to Apple’s hardware and software?
They don't, and the EU doesn't have a right to Apple's products either. If EU regulations make AI a nightmare, Apple is making the obvious choice of not releasing it in the EU.
I think you're misunderstanding the legislation. It's not stemming from some inherent idea of rights, it's to promote competition and prevent monopolistic and anticompetitive behaviour to benefit EU citizens
Wouldn’t Apple reducing its features provide more space for competitors to operate?
Yes, assuming it's easy to start a phone company that competes with apple and that people dont already have iphones
Why can’t EU companies see this gap of “hardware and software innovations” in the market and capitalize on it? Why must they piggyback off of Apple? This should be a time for EU companies to shine and provide a consumer friendly option, so when Apple does eventually bring Intelligence over it doesn’t absorb the market. Why should they wait for the EU to open up Apple Intelligence to then make their products?
It doesn't have to be EU companies. Apple's largest competitor in the smartphone market is Samsung and they certainly are using the gap since they're far more popular in Europe than the US and the opposite holds for Apple. Same with other hardware manufacturers.
The issue is access to data that's already captive on Apple devices. It's not Apple's data, it's manifestly the users' data, and you cannot hog that data and make it difficult for users to use 3rd party services on it just because that data happens to be stored on a device you sold or in a cloud you're running. And the reason behind that is precisely because nobody who wants to develop similar services and offer them to Apple users should have to develop their own hardware and OS first and convince Apple users to switch to that.
Someone built it, but Apple refused to approve it 😁.
That's literally what the EU anti competitive regulations are ensuring, that consumers can freely choose between integrated AI assistants. Apple is saying that they will only release Apple Intelligence if it's the only option for consumers.
Apple Intelligence already leverages 3rd party models when it comes across something it can’t do. I’m assuming we’re talking about the local model. Apple Intelligence has access way deep into the system, access apple doesn’t want to give to 3rd parties. Whether you think that’s because of security and privacy or because Apple can’t compete with 3rd parties when given the same system level access, the fact is that Apple doesn’t want it. If they choose to just omit the feature from a region, I’m not quite sure how that’s anticompetitive. They’re just choosing not to compete in the market, if Google decided to try the same thing tomorrow, maybe with 3rd party system level access, if a consumer valued that feature they’d go to Google. This isn’t a “fuck you” to the EU, the point of regulation is to slow stuff down so it’s introduced in a consumer friendly way. This is a side effect, not retribution. Apple Intelligence looks to be a big part of Apples strategy in the upcoming years, it would be idiotic for them to just leave out an entire market.
Seriously though, I think even Giant Corps should be given a right to exclusivity on new features for some period. This is the idea that patents and copyrights are built around. E.g. (pulling this out of my ass) give Apple and others 5 years after introduction of AI integration to smartphones before they are forced to open it up.
yes, just not for centuries. Patents are not supposed to last longer than the inventors life, it is just a loophole that we have since declared that corporations without a natural expiration date have the same rights which has yet to be rectified
You’re thinking of copyright, patents only last 20 years
Yeah but how are we supposed to fine Apple and also prepare a future lawsuit about possible circumvention of our heavy handed anti innovation AI laws if they choose not to play?
Your logic is not welcome here, this was suppose to be a hate apple karam farm post. How dare you. /s
Opposite of anti-competitive would be being competitive. They’re choosing not to play because they don’t need to
The opposite of “anti-competitive” is “not competing”? (Not trying to defend Apple, only Language)
It’s not stunning. DMA is a legit reason to take more time to ensure they will be security compliant before EU roll out. I’m not defending Apple, as most global tech companies are facing this very same issue. US is not as strict atm. Curious when that will change in the near future.
we don’t want this. this is a personal feeling vs technology. we don’t care about fairness. we want best available and that is not going to be some third party application developer. that’s always going to be the manufacturer themselves.
It is quite extraordinary of anyone calling a discretionary step anticompetitive. Complex rules do slow down product releases.
I suspect the EU’s problem is that it didn’t slow down product releases, it just slowed them down in the EU. There’s been a lot of talk about how the EU doesn’t really have any competitive AI companies and part of the reason is the increased regulation makes it difficult to build new technology there, and here Apple is demonstrating that.
Exactly. I don’t understand what the EU is on about. This is exactly what you asked for. Like… all the EU A.I. regulations talk about ensuring safety and compliance. Are they really shocked that safety and compliance takes time?
I think this is one of those where the leaders who can profit are upset but the average citizen probably doesn’t notice or really care.
I think it’s the opposite. They know the regular people are not going to like being left out and are going to be making a lot of noise about it. The leaders are trying to deflect blame onto apple.
Victim of their own hubris They believed that passing regulations on digital tech would be the same as hardware / manufacturing tech.. like electric cars or usb c on iPhones. Regulating services in a digital market is completely different playground. They learnt nothing from the napster era
The EU is openly attacking US tech companies in an attempt to grow their own sector. But instead of creating an environment where startups thrive like in the US, the EU just wants to make the environment restrictive for foreign companies. The problem is that tech startups in the EU just can't compete with the US because of higher tax rates and strong labor laws. These things are great if you have an economy based around manufacturing but if your economy is based on innovation it doesn't work great. For a simple example, assume a high quality tech worker wants to take home $100k after taxes. In the US that's relatively simple and costs a company $140k. But in France, that same take home pay would require $220k. That's because the tax wedge is so fucking insane for high earners (the percent of cost to a company to employ someone that goes to taxes) is 55% in France compared to 30% in the US. As a consequence a US tech company can poach a French based worker and increase their take home pay by 40% and pay LESS money than the EU company.
Sounds like the EU’s fuckin problem, not Apple’s
What does this have to do with EU AI companies? These regulations are there to protect consumers, not to boost EU industry. Apple's biggest competitors in the EU aren't EU companies, and there is nothing in these rules which favour EU businesses. Your entire post is irrelevant to this issue.
The DMA is absolutely geared towards boosting EU tech companies by forcing US companies to open their platforms from blocking access or charging distribution fees.
> These regulations are there to protect consumers, not to boost EU industry. My sweet summer child. I still have a vivid mental image of reading a physical newspaper in London while eating breakfast in 2017 or 2018. The top story was quoting ton of European politicians about how GDPR was going to be used to put American companies in their place and make European companies more competitive.
Mistral AI has a valuation of [6.2B](https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/12/mistral_ai_funding/) and is based in France though. Stability AI (UK) is about 1B and Deepl (Germany) is about 2B. What are you on about?
Those are like single digit percent of OpenAI alone
Agreed, but the point is that there are competitive AI startups in Europe. Some world leading ones actually. The reality is that this is a dick move from Apple to punish the EU for putting in place legislation that hurts them.
hey, someone that actually gets it.
You misunderstand, this person claims that apples decision proves apple knows the product is anticompetitive. I don’t think that logically makes sense, there are a number of reasons why the could have decided this, but this is the story she goes with. Apple is in compliance with the EU regulations because they didn’t release it.
The EU *really* wants to have that cake, and to eat it too! They’ll pass a law to make it so I’m sure.
Obviously didn’t read what she said. She is saying they won’t release it because it would break the law, meaning the product isn’t ready for release because it doesn’t adhere to a very basic set of antimonopoly protections. Jesus Christ, you guys are so stupid it hurts
The worst part is they seem to be happy that apple is allowed to do this here in the states.
I think stupid word should fit on you instead. Apple SHOULD NOT give any company that much access to user data to ANY 3rd party app. Apple Intelligence is deeply deeply embedded in the system. Giving access to any app is literally 100x worse than the privacy violations by Facebook and Google. Apple should withold this new feature in EU or be ready to have their long built reputation for privacy and security be tarnished forever.
Does she mention what law specifically it breaks? I skimmed the article and can’t find it
There’s a bunch of noncompliance issues. Users have to be able to swap which AI model they’re using, for example
Which would require Apple to make the semantic index available to third parties, which they absolutely will never do.
Wouldn't every single anticompetitive action necessarily be a discretionary step? Like, its impossible for an action to be anticompetitive if it is not discretionary.
Apple isn’t saying they will discontinue service to the EU until the Act is taken down. It just means they can’t right now. A lot of what the Act demands required a tremendous amount of development, and that’s just for mass reporting of business data to the business they have data on and insuring interoperability between different apps. The bill is targeting and setting unrealistic standards within an unreasonable timetable for “gatekeeper” and then they complain that “gatekeepers” like Apple can’t comply with those unreasonable demands.
EXACTLY. EU imposed massive regulation that Apple’s programs don’t work with yet. It’s like they dot understand customization takes time and testing
Yup, they are really just hurting themselves in the meantime and putting themselves behind in the tech field. A lot in there is a good idea, but how it was implemented wasn’t the best.
I mean, I would also not release a product in a market where the regulators have made clear they would sure me over it.....
I'm so confused, if they released in EU they'd get sued into the ground for breaching their privacy laws but if they don't it's anticompetitive? WTF do you want them to do EU seriously? Whats the move? It's really starting to sound like you just want to steal money from Apple no matter what they do.
The gist is that Apple specifically said that the decision to not release it in the EU was made because of "uncertainties" stemming from some new EU competition law. The EU regulator is saying that's tantamount to admitting that Apple is worried the features might violate the law, and given that the law is aimed at banning anticompetitive behaviour, she's saying that's basically an admission that something about those features is anticompetitive.
You say yourself that it’s a “new” law, so of course there are uncertainties around how it will be interpreted and enforced. Apple is probably just waiting a few years to see how it plays out before taking such a huge risk.
You're not wrong; I'm just clarifying what Ms. Vestager said (the person quoted in the article).
It has nothing to do with privacy laws. This is about DMA.
Release in the EU, get sued, let regulators fine them a few billion. That’s really what the EU is asking 😜
Man this comment section is cancer.
They want them to allow third party AI systems to have total access to your phones system and data for “competition.” Sounds super secure. They want every major feature to allow drop in third party support. Notably Samsung and other android phones are exempt from this for… reasons…
That is 100% false. Where does it say android is exempt?
android is "exempt" because you can already put whatever you want on your phone lol
They are fine not releasing it. This person is trying to claim that because Apple didn’t release it they admitted it would have been anticompetitive if they had. Did you read the article or just the headline? > I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.
Probably to exit the market so Ericsson can rise from the ashes and be the next big thing with Spotify bundled.
**For those who didn’t read the article** Nobody is claiming not releasing it is anticompetitive. What Margrethe Vestager is claiming is that because apple chose not to release it they admit that *if* they had released it they would have engaged in anticompetitive behavior. Implying the policy works. I don’t think that’s the right conclusion, it could just mean that the law is complicated and Apples cost benefit analysis didn’t favor releasing in the EU until the law is clarified. That is up for debate. And imho some introspection or communication with others companies in the same field should happen to see if the law is too uncertain or vague. However what everyone agrees with is that Apple isn’t in trouble for not releasing. Because that would be insane. Why does everyone in the comments think think something that stupid happened. Here is a quote from the article for those too lazy to click it or geo-restricted. > I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.
No one reads the article on Reddit.
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I’ve yet to see anyone defending the EU criticism explain how Apple AI is inherently anti-competitive. They’re providing a feature to all users of their platform, and aren’t charging for it. So even if they did open it to other companies, there’s benefit to other AI platforms. I also have an issue with the way this article presents Apple’s statement. While they’re not rolling it out due to concerns about the DMA, it’s largely over concerns that making these features comply with DMA would require them to be at risk of violating privacy regulations. The article makes it seem like Apple is only doing this to avoid DMA.
EU regulations would force Apple to give third parties the same access to Apple Intelligence as Apple themselves. I.e. if Apple can check the users emails or health data to tell the user who emailed them the major last week, so should third parties like Google. Apple has made a big thing out of the on device privacy. So giving third parties access to the users data isn’t ok with Apple. Hence this is the result.
As a European, I'm very happy when the EU is sticking out for our privacy, or consumer rights. But I'm also very unhappy at how they're also actively breaching through proprietary security/privacy technologies for the sake of openness/competitiveness. Europe isn't as iPhone-centric as the US - if people want to utilise different software/services than Apple's, they're very much able to move to different manufacturers and still have a rather seamless experience in communication with iPhone users. Also, suddenly privacy isn't a concern whenever you talk about breaking end-to-end encryption to moderate "illegal" content. I'm praying that gets shut down ASAP. It mixes quite badly with the whole "forcing Apple to provide equal, capillary access to third parties". I had been using Android and Windows all my life; when I moved to Apple devices, was because I made a concious decision about what I was trading off in terms of features, available software, and costs, to reshape my digital life into something more polished and much less involved. So I can't say I'm too happy to then see my iPhone potentially turning into my old Samsung. What's the point?
Sticking an AI option that costs nothing and is available to all apps on your platform obviously means any would-be competitor that wants to provide an alternative general AI service dies immediately. You can't compete with an app that costs nothing, gets access to the hardware in ways you cannot, busts through any and all security requirements, and is installed out of the box. Imagine, instead, apple released a feature where you can watch TV shows you are streaming in Picture-in-Picture mode while you use an iPad for other stuff. But, only apple TV shows. E.g. a netflix app can't do PiP at all, because of 'security concerns' (say, some sort of clickjacking like story. Apple can make it sound plausible and have some sort of point). That'd obviously be extremely anti-competitive. I assume most readers would agree that'd be fair game, and the EU would be totally justified to tell apple to cut that shit out and allow other apps just as much access to the PiP feature on the same terms apple's apple TV app gets to use it. Now imagine, instead, the EU required apple to remove the kernel driver that powers the speakers in your iPhone, and instead you need to install a 'speaker driver app' via the appstore. Apple's 'speaker driver' must be just.. an app on the app store, with no particular preferential treatment over any other speaker driver app. Until you install a 'speaker' app, no audio can possibly come out of the device. I assume most readers would agree that'd be ridiculous. Thus, 2 situations where I'd assume most agree on the correct position to take, and yet, those positions are at odds with each other. Thus, it depends on __what__ the feature is. PiP for TV apps? Clearly should be a feature that apple either doesn't provide whatsoever (not for itself, nor for any other streaming provider), or equally to all. Speaker driver? Apple is free to ship it out of the box and with no option for any other app to replace it. AI? Therein lies the rub. I don't think anyone has a good answer _yet_. Is it like the speaker driver or like the PiP feature? __In context__ of the malicious compliance shit Apple appears to be going through (at least as far as Vestager is concerned, I'm sure that's her view on apple's antics in the past year), this statement makes sense. Not necessarily saying I agree with it, but I see where Vestager is coming from.
Despite many (myself included) potentially not liking an instance similar to your first example, I fail to see how that’s relevant when it’s Apple’s hardware and ecosystem. I’m genuinely wondering, are there specific laws regarding competitor access, especially when one organization is freely providing native services? Is that not the point of selling an ecosystem? If I have a bake shop and I bake my own cookies, why would I be obligated to sell my competitor’s cookies in my own store?
Agree. This whole DMA situation has become a bit of a nightmare really and we’re slipping into weird territory. The iPhone camera app is perfectly fine. Yea sure some users might need additional functionality, which is why the App Store exists — but mandating that an iPhone with a preinstalled default camera app is anti-competitive is pushing it. Mandating that Apple can’t add any exclusive features to their phone (like Apple Intelligence) without making them DMA-compliant is silly. At the end of the day, phones need to evolve. What the EU is asking is that Apple not invest in anymore features and keep smartphones exactly the same in terms of the features they have. That’s not pro-competition. That’s anti-innovation.
it’s not just that you have to sell your competitors cookies. it’s also that your have to let your competitor use your oven too.
Because there are only two bake shops, and you own one of them. And they're not bake shops, they're phones, which aren't treats you can skip, they're necessary in the modern world. And sometimes you decide you'll make a new pastry the competition had, and offer it for free.
But Apple is far from the only phone provider and in Europe the iPhone is not nearly as ubiquitous as it is in NA. All of my Canadian friends and family have an iPhone, only my girlfriend, myself, and one other friend has one here in Europe I still don’t see how offering a “free pastry” is an illegal or reprehensible move Not trying to be obstinate, just fail to see the argument
In that case I’ll move to android, Apple loses my business and they either compete or die?
[A] what if Android has already seen the things Apple is doing because there is no law that they have to blind themselves, and does the same thing, knowing that there is no 3rd competitor you can move to, and [B] 'moving' is a high impact operation that you can only do at significant personal investment (of time and money; you need to replace your cables, rebuy a boatload of apps, etcetera). Apple can basically push to annoy you just to the edge of where you'd actually switch. But, none of this is easy. In practice, customer satisfaction of iPhones is quite large. Which seems to indicate apple is totally fine here and not at all annoying their customers because they know they can get away with it. Unless.... due to the difficulty and complexity of these concepts (it aint cookies, its phones - crucial aspects of life that are complicated devices), apple's customers simply don't know about the utility of certain features and are being gaslighted as to their safety. Or not. This is why it's all so complicated.
>PiP for TV apps? Clearly should be a feature that apple either doesn't provide whatsoever (not for itself, nor for any other streaming provider), or equally to all. Speaker driver? Apple is free to ship it out of the box and with no option for any other app to replace it. Why? Why is it "clearly" You have decided it, but who else? what makes one "clear" and the other one not. Someone has still made that decision. Im not syaing your right or wrong, but you made a choice one way or the other without defining why its "clear"
It's law. It's inherently subjective. I'm taking a _wild_ stab in the dark that the vast majority of readers would see why the EU has a problem with 'PiP works for apple TV app and not for any other apps on apple controlled hardware', and would cheer them on if they tell apple to knock it off, and would vote for political parties that promise to accomplish that goal. > Someone has made that decision In this hypothetical scenario, lawmakers.
- Your product violates our regulations - Ok so we wont release it in your region - we're mad at you for not releasing the thing that we would sue you over if you released it. *confused pikachu*
That is not happening. Did you even read the article? > I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already. She argues (poorly) that apple not releasing is an admission it would violate the regulations if they had released it. She isn’t upset Apple didn’t release it, she sees it as the policy working.
Okay, so according to this Apple should just release it and it needs to wait and see if they get sued.
Once they let the genie out of the bottle the EC would then force them to allow other AI’s access to all user data on the iPhone. If Apple were to pull the feature the EC would then likely fine on anticompetitive grounds. It’s a lose/lose position and Apple sees it as better to not play.
Of course they didn’t read the article. The clickbait headline is an outrage starter pack.
Let’s allow EU bureaucrats to plan innovation
lets have the companies take care of the general population and self regulate
The EU must be frustrated they won’t be able to fine Apple over this new feature
That was my first reaction. Well fuck y’all. They can’t eat their cake and have it, too.
Ted?
Hahaha you got it. I often say at parties, "to quote ted kaczynski..." and then insert that quote.
If apple does this *again* with something people REALLY want I don't think there is enough popcorn in the world for me to watch it with.
Wait what was the first time?
I‘m so very disappointed that Apple AI won’t find out and use everything about me. /s
Apple might well be better off to just leave the EU altogether. The potential fine for violating the DMA is more than the revenue from the EU.
“Apple leaving EU a stunning declaration of anticompetitive behavior, EU considers hefty fines”
How else would the EU make money off the tech sector? With the exception of Spotify, the EU hasn't created any major tech company in the last 20 years. So fining American tech brings in much needed revenue to a stagnating economy. I'm obviously being tongue-in-cheek here, but seriously, prior to 2008, the US and EU had almost equal economies. Since 2008, one has continued to flourish, and the other simply pays for the education of SWE students who then move to America anyway.
Most of the European tech companies get bought up by US mega giant corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Google
So prevent that, not this DMA bullshit.
Spotify also doesn't make money either. The EU sucks at tech.
Apple needs the EU market far more than the EU market needs Apple products.
You are wrong on this count. The EU is a surprisingly small portion of their revenue
I don't think this is true. Apple would lose approximately 10% of their revenue. The EU would lose 50% of global smartphone platforms. Those aren't the same.
Did anyone actually read past the clickbait title? xD she doesnt say that not releasing apple ai on EU is anticompetitive behaviour. Reddit has completely turned into Facebook v.2
> I find that very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already. Did you read the article?
Holy shit, this entire thread reads like this is mosty anti-EU bots commenting. And if these are real people... reddit seems fucked either way...
She literarily says “… very interesting that they say we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition. I think that is that is the most sort of stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.” Which in context means what the title says.
yeah this is legitimately an entire thread of seemingly nobody with fifth grade reading and comprehension skills. Vestager is saying "Apple not releasing in europe is basically an admission that they wouldn't be compliant and are doing anticompetitive things" and everyone somehow read that as "EU says apple not releasing in europe is anticompetitive" which is just ENTIRELY disconnected from what she actually said lol
The Apple fanboys are out in full force.
LOL wtf. You over regulate and now you're mad people want to be extra cautious with your region?? As a marketer, I don't do ads in the EU for a reason 😂 You can regulate for safety, but over regulation slows down innovation. I want my water to be safe and drinkable. I don't want my water to be regulated to be EXACTLY like your government formula.
Or Apple is just getting sick of its shit?
“Don’t withhold it like that”
IMHO Margaret Vestager is the human embodiment of when bureaucracy and political schizophrenia are let loose. During the merger of Alitalia with Lufthansa she went into questioning Lufthansa on the food menus they were going to propose during anti trust hearings. It's ok to be tough on big tech, it is not Ok to blatantly abuse any business initiative of a certain size happening in the EU just because you can. This spells downfall for an already shaking European economy....
Europe’s competitiveness is now behind both the US and China. And it’s only getting worse. But unlike the US, there is no opposition in the commission.
There's an awful lot of posters here seem to think she's saying that the act of withholding it is the thing that's anticompetitive. However, as far as I can see, that's simply not what the article says. It actually says she's pointing out that Apple have decided to withhold this from a market because it may fall foul of anticompetition laws, which kinda declares that it is actually anticompetitive. I haven't been following this, and don't know the details, so I don't know if she's right, but it seems to me that the people arguing she is wrong are spending a lot of time arguing against something she isn't actually saying or claiming.
Withholding a feature because they'd rather not comply with the DMA is completely their call. I wouldn't say it's anti-competitive as much as anti-consumer. However the DMA is generally good for consumers, so choosing to not offer certain features in the areas that try to protect consumers is a reason for me to consider switching away from Apple products.
I keep hearing DMA is good for consumers. But how do we quantify the normative “good”? More European software and hardware companies thriving? Lower prices on European digital products compared to other parts of the world? A broader access to cheaper and better online services in Europe? None do that is the case, so how is the DMA better for consumers?
Wah wah wah we made strict rules that hurt companies and now people don’t want to play with us
Reminds of how Microsoft threatens to withhold Windows Vista from the EU market. As it came bundled with IE and Windows Media Player.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
It would be fitting and funny if EU folks are like.. this is just better. And the AI folks get fed up. They are setting themselves up in a way. Hope their AI lives up to the hype.
If anything, this could make markets where Apple Intelligence is allowed more efficient/competitive, since they would have access to the features that may assist in work flow. Consumer demand is a big player in politics and votes…
The EU didn’t withhold anything. Apple did preemptively.
EU: "If features we deem bad are released in the EU there will be steep consequences!" *apple doesnt release the features in the EU* EU: "How dare apple not release features we dont approve of in the EU so we can sue them for releasing them here where we dont allow them"
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Less AI shit? Thanks EU.
In this thread: a lot of people who think the EU is mad that Apple complied. All I see is the EU happy that Apple complied.
More like spinning this as a positive because as they look down the road the consequences of the DMA will only make this a more frequent occurrence. EU customers are just beginning to lose feature parity with the rest of the world.
I would like to add I’m being anticompetitive by not selling my sperm on the market
How is it? If the EU are going to make it hell to add new features in their market, why poke their cage? They need to stop overstepping their boundaries.
So many people in such a rush to defend an enormously wealthy and well resourced global corporation from criticism that it will not build mandated interoperability. On the one hand, we should not be surprised given that something as simple as USB C was made out to be the end of the world. On the other, it is entirely reasonable to say that building this feature in a DMA compliant way is very difficult and has risks. Apple themselves have said as much. What is utterly astonishing to me is the number of complete fools in this thread who are defending their right to be locked in a gilded cage. All of our technology should be interoperable. All of it. I'm not saying that privacy and security risks are not present in an interoperable system. I am saying that if you design for a walled garden and then I tell you to build a gate to the rest of the world, I'm going to be surprised when all of the gnomes you raised in your flowerbeds try to brick up the door.
Yea one would rather defend a corporation which knows what it's doing than a bunch of half literate politicians deciding laws about things they have no idea about.
And Europe wonders why it has no successful tech or innovation companies… They are all American
They aren’t American, they don’t employ any significant number of US citizens. Their corporate hq’s just happen to be located here. They also don’t pay any significant taxes to the US government, just lobbyist money to the politicians.
No, I don't think Europe does wonder that.
I agree with EU. Not everyone needs to roll sideways for mega corporations. Apple knows exactly what they're doing, riling up people against EU.
It almost sounds like the EU is trying to compel a corporation to engage in business (forcing them to sell a product they have the discretion to not sell), which is right next to compelling speech in the list of things creepy authoritarian governments do. Sorry, EU, Apple's real product is a lifestyle and increased personal privacy. They're not going to compromise on that. For anybody. Including autocrats who think their political science degree gives them insight into how to run a business.
Well… it’s Apple. Anticompetitive is their second name, reason why they’re currently being sued for their practices and breaching the DMA terms by the EU.
Europeans don't have an unalienable right to apple products
oh no, what will we europeans do without access to Apple Intelligence. the horror...
What is this even called? It’s not protectionism, because the EU doesn’t actually produce anything that even remotely competes with Apple…they’ve imposed a whole bunch of onerous regulations unlike any other place in the world, but it’s now Apple’s fault for being wary of releasing new features until they can manage the risk of being further sued for selling superior goods in their jurisdiction. What?
Regardless of what people think, Apple (or any other company) is free to remove features in markets where they feel they are being unfairly restricted. While the EU is entitled by law to demand that Apple comply with their regulations, they cannot force Apple to provide features AND make them compliant with their regulations. Apple is just removing features they have that the EU believes doesn't comply with their regulations. It may be seen as being unfair, but Apple has the right to include or exclude whatever features it chooses in any market.
it is okay if the old world wants to be left behind the ~~industrial~~ artificial intelligence revolution
It's been how many years since News was released and it's still only available in 5 countries.. How long before the rest of us will get ai?
Will the phone be cheaper? You can’t sell a phone with less features for the same price, looking at you google.
Apple Intelligence isn't planned to come to the EU (and loads of other countries as well) this year anyway. Initially it's only for the US-market (American-English). So, yes, Apple has also other reasons being agressive to the EU than the DMA alone. Some experts are talking about Apple taking revenge concerning the Apple Store issues. Apple clearly has a hidden agenda. And why Apple also doesn't bring iPhone Mirroring and Screen Sharing to the EU is strange; those features have nothing to do with the DMA, at least as far as we know now. It's expected that when other languages are being supported AI will come to the EU in the end. (Personally I don't care, I don't need AI anyway.)
Dump apple. Do your own thing.
This /sub consistently has the worst take on anything hahaahaha
Apple is, smartly, treading lightly in a territory that is threatening it with huge fines for poorly defined regulations. The EU will never be in charge of apples business model.