After USB-C win, EU tells Tim Cook that Apple must 'open up its gates to competitors'.

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 580 points –
After USB-C win, EU tells Tim Cook that Apple must 'open up its gates to competitors' - 9to5Mac
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After USB-C win, EU tells Tim Cook that Apple must 'open up its gates to competitors'.::The iPhone 15 has USB-C, a move largely due to impending legislation in the European Union requiring smartphones and other...

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Finally someone is fighting those companies that take advantage of controlling the platforms.

Can't happen soon enough. Personally, I'd wish this would go much further and would allow every device to be flashable, with only a few exceptions for safety, like cars.

There's also a certain irony that certain other places will go to bat for right to repair, and then turn around and say "Actually, I want to live in a walled garden.", not realizing that these are two sides of the same coin.

with only a few exceptions for safety, like cars.

No. There are three main bullshit arguments being used by lobbyists actively making the world a worse place by fighting against this type of legislation.

  • safety and security
  • intellectual propery rights
  • hindering innovation

All three are demonstrably used in hearings to convince legislators to not sign right to repair bills into law. And all three are absolute bullshit.

Replacing the brakes on your own car is not generally seen as introducing safety risks, so why would software be any different? The only things that actually make cars safe are competent drivers (wether flesh and bone, or digital) and proper manufacturing (so no malfunctioning during use).

There is a reason full self driving is not legal in most places worldwide, and likely won't be for a very long time. We've seen too many examples of software fuck ups and the legal responsibility in case of an accident is still a difficult part of the equation.

If we're able to integrate full infotainment systems into cars, and all kinds of AI gadgets for driving assistance. We should be able to make cars safer even if the software is user servicable.

No more gatekeeping bullshit.

with only a few exceptions for safety, like cars.

Safety means extra-flashable.

Yeah man, can't wait to be sharing the road with people running custom ROMs on their 2 ton death machine. People are well known for being responsible in situations like that.

Quite frankly why the hell should I trust any publicly traded automaker to flash quality software?

Some of them have a track record for quantifying the cost of fixing an issue versus cost of settling lawsuits for that unfixed issue killing people.

Why would I trust an unaccountable rando with the same thing? One has a brand they need to uphold, and are liable for any kind of damages caused by their firmware.

When Joe Shmo crashes his soft-modded Honda Civic into a crowd of people, who's going to pay for the damage and lawsuits, etc.?

People do already. It's called tuning. I drove a car I custom tuned myself for 3 years...

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How about Apple laptops next, including specs to write drivers.

Also how about not forcing everybody to use Apple hardware to compile their apps? How about allowing xcode competititors and running on different hardware? Allowing to emulate macos/ios?
Fuck apple.

Also how about not forcing everybody to use Apple hardware to compile their apps?

It's a thing? Can't you just gcc binary into existence?

Fuck apple.

Fuck Putin. Fuck apple too.

In principle you can, the Mach-O format is openly documented and implemented in the major compilers. The issue is that you need a sysroot (aka SDK) of the frameworks and headers for your target OS, which in Apple's case are proprietary and cannot be redistributed legally (you could probably rip them out of a macOS installation yourself though). For iOS apps you'd also need to sign the binaries and install the app to the device which is non-trivial to impossible to do on other platforms.

Xcode is such hot garbage, the UX Is what you get when you like pretty and hate your programmer. (Honestly I hate most of Apple's UX.)

Also I compiled a C# app for osx-x64 yesterday on Linux (that works, though I have no idea of I could sign it properly to avoid Apple's annoying side load interference), though maybe it included a binary originally compiled by Microsoft on Apple hardware.

including specs to write drivers.

Whoa, that's super strong move. I 100% support it. Sadly, I'm not in EU. Faust bless EU, they have really big potatoes.

I mean first you have to get politicians to understand what the hell a “driver” is, and no, Gretchen, it’s not Uber.

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Lucky for you they would be super unlikely to change the hardware so much that you wouldn't benefit from "European" drivers in another region.

I mean I can't vote it into existence

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I would love to see the looks on the Apple execs' faces when they learn news like this. Those greedy cunts must get a rage boner every time they're forced to act like decent world citizens

Honestly, so long as people keep buying their phones they really don't care about this kind of stuff. Sure, it was a way to drive up margins for a while, but they will just move onto their next bag of tricks to make it hard to leave.

'Security' is apple's version of 'think of the children'.

I love that the company famous for their 1984 ad tells you they know what software’s best for you to run on a device you own. Very big brother. I really hope iOS 18 third party stores aren’t geo locked to the EU; I wouldn’t put it past them.

Can we start with RCS integration or opening the iMessage protocol?

I hope that leads to bootleg iPhones for 1/10th of the price. Could finally convince me to buy one over an Android.

As though the EU caused Apple to switch to USB-C. This was obviously years-in-the-making. iPads already had it.

found the Apple fanboy

It would be foolish to think that the company that started shipping notebooks with only USB-C five years ago, and that transitioned its iPads to USB-C something like three years ago, wasn't going to make a phone with USB-C eventually. I mean, you'd have to be disingenuous about the facts to take such a position.

It would be foolish to think that a company that goes far out of it's way to make walled gardens would open up it's charging port to an industry standard making it easier to use charging cables from other phones. They kept the thunderbolt as long as possible until the EU told them to quit the crap.

They kept the thunderbolt as long as possible

You don't know what you're talking about. It's a Lightning port. Thunderbolt is an industry standard, developed to share a USB-C plug by Intel and Apple. Lightning was Apple tech.

Then why did the Iphone not change after 11 years?

An entrenched ecosystem and backlash from consumers the last time they made such a change?

EU doing something good for a change.

As opposed to what?

Chat surveillance I guess

Isn't that the UK which isn't EU anymore?

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Trying to get rid of encryption

I believe that’s the UK not the EU.

It's kinda both, and a fair amount more.

E: lol people need to actually read the news. If people think the UK is the only government that wants to read messages then you have your head in the sand.

The EU has expressed a desire for this, the US has, Australia has, Russia has, Israel has, India has, Pakistan has, etc etc.

Speaking desire is not the same as implementing.

Of course they want to have full control, but they are listening to the experts as to why that isn't a good idea.

In that case, neither has implemented, so you can't complain about either.

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The EU is far from perfect. But they do good stuff all the time.

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