EU's Vestager Warns Apple Against Using Privacy, Security To Limit Competition (reuters.com) 70
Europe's tech chief Margrethe Vestager on Friday warned iPhone maker Apple against using privacy and security concerns to fend off competition on its App Store, reasons CEO Tim Cook gave for not allowing users to install software from outside the Store. From a report: Vestager, who is also the European Commission's executive vice president, last year proposed rules called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that would force Apple to open up its lucrative App Store so that users can download apps from the internet or third-party app stores in a practice known as side-loading. Cook, speaking at an event last month, said the proposal would destroy the security and privacy of iPhones. read more Vestager said she shares Cook's security concerns. "I think privacy and security is of paramount importance to everyone," Vestager told Reuters in an interview.
"The important thing here is, of course, that it's not a shield against competition, because I think customers will not give up neither security nor privacy if they use another app store or if they sideload," she said. Vestager indicated that she was open to changes in her proposal, which needs input from EU countries and EU lawmakers before it can become law. "I think that it is possible to find solutions to this," she said.
"The important thing here is, of course, that it's not a shield against competition, because I think customers will not give up neither security nor privacy if they use another app store or if they sideload," she said. Vestager indicated that she was open to changes in her proposal, which needs input from EU countries and EU lawmakers before it can become law. "I think that it is possible to find solutions to this," she said.
Re:Apple's reply to the EU (Score:4, Insightful)
"And what is your background in software or security, Madame Cheesemonkey?" Tim Cook asked calmly
Better than yours rich boy
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I tend to be 50-50 on that one!
1) Of course limiting what users can install and vetting what they can install sure helps with security. Any sensible organization will do just that with their own network and devices.
2) On the other hand, Apple could indeed abuse that principle to get an advantage.
3) Maybe a form that you have to fill on Apple website making absolutely sure that you understand the risks could do the trick and allow you to unlock device and install what you want. Just a nag screen or some warn
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Allowing a third party App Store means "software that gets around our API and/or uses undocumented APIs living in the same ecosystem of user data" which is ironically less threatening on desktop/laptop systems than a handheld device which is increasingly becoming a centralized key, payment system and proof of identity. iOS/iPadOS' exploits make it clear Apple is not paying enough for security audits prior to release, and ignoring all of that, Apple still wants the console game economic model where the real
Re: Apple's reply to the EU (Score:2)
Re: Apple's reply to the EU (Score:2)
"And what is your background in software or security, Madame Cheesemonkey?" Tim Cook asked calmly
Better than yours rich boy
Bzzzzt! Wrong! Thanks for Playing!
Tim may not have any specific security chops; but he has done some embedded(?) software Dev. work in college. He developed some traffic-control system that actually got adopted by some town.
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It appears her background in software or security is that she thinks it does not matter. She's like the politicians who think you can make maths (i.e. encryption) work for the good guys only and somehow magically block bad guys.
Re: Apple's reply to the EU (Score:2)
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"What's yours, fruitcake?" was her reply.
Typical Bureaucrat (Score:2, Insightful)
This is exactly why the vast majority of bureaucrats, just like the vast majority of the public at large, have zero business opining on technical matters.
Doubly so when their misunderstanding can force ill-advised changes that can adversely affect the lives of people who have presumably made an informed decision to have things remain the way they are, and triply so when there are readily available alternatives.
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Re:Typical Bureaucrat (Score:5, Insightful)
... What is wrong with an app asking you permission to access the microphone, photos, gps, compass, wifi, ,sms text from a particular number, keyboard language, unique id, folder in data storage, mobile data. And why can't Apple make it super easy to see and revoke these permissions at any time?
Apple's primary interest isn't your security - it's keeping you in their walled garden where they can control your experience and take a cut of the proceeds of everything that gets installed on your device. As for user control of app permissions, it's less trouble to say "no" than to claw back a "yes". There'd be a popcorn-worthy shit-storm if they gave their users carte blanche and then decided to revoke it at a later date.
Re:Typical Bureaucrat (Score:4, Insightful)
Because security is subjective, and it really diverges when there's an adversarial relationship.
If I'm trying to secure the beach for my invasion, and you're trying to secure the beach against my invasion, we're both working on security but have exactly opposite opinions about what is secure and what isn't—without either of us being wrong.
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All Apple has to do it give the end user a choice, a bit of a hard one but a legal choice. Either you solely use the Apple App store or you choose external direct, your choice you get to make it once, all or nothing.
They can of course limit the warranty, your choice or strip away privacy and security guarantees.
So the end user makes a choice solely use Apple or only use external suppliers, Apple could also run an external distribution publisher and shop. The internal Apple store more country club but they
Whiners, all of them. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't like Apple having an exclusive store for its apps, then don't buy an iphone or develop for it. Full stop.
If enough people actually did this, then Apple might reconsider its policy.
If not, then evidently not enough people are inconvenienced by Apple's decisions for it to matter.
Honestly, this whole "Apple needs to open up to third party app stores" strikes me as some sort of tirade against a company that happens to be making shitpiles of money for no other reason than the fact that Tim Cook happens to be very wealthy.
Which is just petty jealousy.
Don't make your apps for the iphone in the first place if it bothers you that much, otherwise all you are doing in screaming out about how "unfair" Apple is being for having a lot of users and representing a large potential revenue stream that you can't access just under your own preferred policy terms. Hell, if you want to make the same kindws of profit margins on the app store as you do on other platforms, then make the iphone version's purchases correspondingly more expensive. Again, if users object to the price variance and your app genuinely adds value to their smartphone, they will vote with their wallet and get a smartphone that allows them to use your app more affordably.
Put up, or shut up, goddammit.
I'm fully aware that this post going to be modded as a troll or flame-bait, but honestly I am sick to death of hearing people bitch about Apple and its store policies when alternatives to Apple products actually *DO* exist.
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mod parent up
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The opinions were the same in 2007 when Apple had only partially recovered from the 1990s and few people had heard of Tim Cook (because we were flaming Steve Jobs instead) but had revealed that the iPhone would suck as much as XBoxes. And the same opinion applied to
Re:Whiners, all of them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you fanboys ever actually read the complaints (or the associated antitrust law)? The issue is ALWAYS about blocking competition. The issue is what COMPETITORS can or can't do, not what USERS can or can't do. "Don't buy an iPhone" does absolutely nothing for a competitor who wishes to sell IOS apps without going through the monopoly of the App Store.
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The problem is that making it impossible to sell it through another app store is illegal in the EU when you have the market share that Apple has.
Read the EU law. If you want to sell on the market place that is the EU, you have to do it by abiding its laws. Not your US laws. The EU laws. What's the problem? Apple can also leave the EU market if it disagrees. It follows EU laws, or it fucks off. It's really not that hard to understand. Sell stuff in the EU = follow EU laws. Or fuck off.
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Is it also illegal in the EU for McDonalds to be the only restaurant that sells a Big Mac?
While other restaurants can make hamburgers, they can't call them a Big Mac
Same thing applies. Developers can make apps for other devices, but they can't say their app is compatible with the iphone without it going through Apple's App store unless the developer can contrive a way to distribute their app without it.
Which is possible, by the way... but in general you'd be restricting yourself to a small enough su
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If McDonalds would organize a market for hamburgers in their restaurants, then yes indeed it should do this under market rules.
ie. Supermarkets in the EU can also not abuse their shopping space and exclude competitors of their own in-house brands. That's because they in many villages have a de facto monopoly. Just like Apple.
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No one is talking about the market for smartphones. They're talking about the market for software that runs on iPhones. Apple maintains a lock on that market, preventing anyone but themselves from selling or distributing software to iPhone users. In the EU and many other places, that is against the law.
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Do you have the first idea how EU antitrust law defines a market?
No, I didn't think so. Here, I looked it up for you [europa.eu].
Market definition is a tool to identify and define the boundaries of competition between firms. It serves to establish the framework within which competition policy is applied by the Commission. The main purpose of market definition is to identify in a systematic way the competitive constraints that the undertakings involved (2) face. The objective of defining a market in both its product and geographic dimension is to identify those actual competitors of the undertakings involved that are capable of constraining those undertakings' behaviour and of preventing them from behaving independently of effective competitive pressure.
For example, if Apple increased the fee it charges for in-app purchases by 5%, would they lose money because developers would switch to a different payment system? No they wouldn't, because developers are blocked from using any in-app payment system other than Apple's. There are no "actual competitors" capable of preventing Apple from "behaving independently of effective competitive press
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Why do you keep making pronouncements about what is or isn't illegal when you have no idea what the law says? I even sent you a link to the law so you could read it yourself. It describes the goals of the law, which have nothing to do with protecting brand identities, and the tests for identifying the boundaries of a market, which have nothing to do with what a product is called. I even quoted part of the summary so you could see that for yourself without having to bother following a link!
Read the law.
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Unlike the supermarkets, the shelf space for cell phone apps is unlimited. You don't have to shop at Apple's "supermarket" as long as the alternatives are just as easy to use. Where Apple has to be reined in is the price fixing that can affect markets outside its realm, like book publishers for instance
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Apple barely has a 20%
Re: Whiners, all of them. (Score:2)
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The problem is that Apple is not in the software business. People conveniently forget that without Apple, the market theyâ(TM)re complaining about (iPhone apps) simply wouldnâ(TM)t exist in the first place.
If you want to compete in the same space with Apple, develop and sell a phone.
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Apple sells software. So yes, they are (among other things) are software company.
And when a company is both providing a marketplace for others and at the same time competes with these others, they have to play by different rules. They cannot abuse their control over the marketplace to impede those others. That's true for Amazon, that's true for Google and that's just as true for Apple.
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The problem is that Apple is not in the software business. People conveniently forget that without Apple, the market theyâ(TM)re complaining about (iPhone apps) simply wouldnâ(TM)t exist in the first place.
If you want to compete in the same space with Apple, develop and sell a phone.
Apple sells software with many parts that are based on open source, and suck as much profit out of it as they can without contributing much back.
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In the real world, people are not magically entitled to what they might happen to wish for or prefer.
Developers who are upset about the policy can develop for other platforms. As I said above. maybe if enough developers did this, Apple might sit up and take notice. But spending time whining about it on publicly viewable forums amounts to just so much of a temper
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If little kids don't like black lung, they shouldn't work in coal mines. If not ....
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If you don't like Apple having an exclusive store for its apps, then don't buy an iphone or develop for it. Full stop.
If enough people actually did this, then Apple might reconsider its policy.
If not, then evidently not enough people are inconvenienced by Apple's decisions for it to matter.
You can always jailbreak as well. That is what I did till I gave up on Apple.
I'm going to advance the slippery slope argument here though. How about only being allowed to buy tires for your car from the car manufacturer's store? Cause third party tires might be unsafe. What, you need a new filter for your furnace? Gotta buy one from the furnace manufacturer, third party ones might not filter as well and expose you to nasty germs!
Apple is (rightly) under pressure to allow people to fix their devi
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I'm going to advance the slippery slope argument here though. How about only being allowed to buy tires for your car from the car manufacturer's store? Cause third party tires might be unsafe. What, you need a new filter for your furnace? Gotta buy one from the furnace manufacturer, third party ones might not filter as well and expose you to nasty germs!
Apple is (rightly) under pressure to allow people to fix their devices without having to go through Apple. In fact there is an entire right to repair movement pushing for this for everything that is possibly fixable. Sure, one is software and one is hardware, but the stakes are exactly the same. My router manufacturer doesn't try to stop me from running OpenWRT. My laptop that came with Windows now runs Linux, Acer did not try to stop me either. I remember when Secure Boot was just coming out and some people thought it would lock you into the OS that came with your hardware. Not many people were in support of that around here, so I'm not sure why Apple gets a pass.
My device is mine to do with as I please (so long as I am not a danger to others). You will never find me advocating for anything less.
I totally agree with you, but intellectual honesty compels me to play devil's advocate here. A lot of us here have pushed really hard to convince people to wear masks and get vaccinated. Masks are mandated in many places, and Covid vaccination 'passports' and the like are in force in other parts of the free world. We've faced travel and activity restrictions. Why these assaults on our freedoms? Because it's necessary in order to protect others from harm.
Arguably, the same might be said of Apple's position r
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Arguably, the same might be said of Apple's position regarding its control over what goes onto users' phones. Malware on one user's phone can cause damage - in some cases possibly even health damage - to other users, and even to people outside Apple's ecosystem. So what's the difference between Covid lockdowns and restrictions, and Apple's lockdowns to (ostensibly) protect against malware?
I guess that argument would be premised on an objective evaluation as to whether App Store apps are really safe(er). There is certainly malware in the App Store. We talk about these stories here fairly regularly. The fact that all but the most recent iPhones are jailbreakable due to uncorrectable hardware flaws would also tend to reinforce the point the Apple ecosystem is hardly secure. Obviously, like vaccines, how safe is safe enough is going to be a thoroughly subjective thing that varies based on l
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What difference does it make it Apple's incentives are for profit? Companies are permitted to make money. If people think Tim Cook is already rich enough, then by all means, stop supporting that infrastructure. All that bitching about how "Apple's rules are unfair" does is show that the developers whining about it are being no less greedy than Apple, because they want a slice of that potential revenue stream.
People are not, however, magically entitled to everything that they want under whatever terms
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Guess we won't agree then. Cheers.
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If you don't like the lock-in, don't buy the device. Don't support the device if you are a developer and don't like the policies.
Alternatives to Apple exist. People keep acting like they are the only game in town and they are not anywhere near it.
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Regardless, you actually have some inalienable rights you cannot sign away even if you are totally OK with it and no matter what you are offered. Even hundreds of years ago our countries founders knew that whatever people were willing to p
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There's restrictions and there's restrictions. Some places mandated masks in stores and some places mandated masks everywhere, so someone yesterday said they got fined for driving alone without a mask, in Portugal IIRC.
Apples hard line seems more like mandating masks everywhere even when alone, a level of security way past what is necessary.
Re: Whiners, all of them. (Score:2)
If not, then evidently not enough people are inconvenienced by Apple's decisions for it to matter.
Or, enough people actually prefer (as in, ya know, "preference") Appleâ(TM)s policies by and large, and so feel the Opposite of "inconvenienced".
Why doesn't their "vote" count?
Now who's trying to limit Consumer Choice???
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My Android phone complained a lot when I wanted to install something from elsewhere. Apples could do the same and those who want to stick to the app store would have that choice.
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If you don't like Apple having an exclusive store for its apps, then don't buy an iphone or develop for it. Full top.
Eh if Apple doesn't like EU laws they can find another trade bloc to operate in.
I say let them have their walled garden (Score:1)
It gives the convenience of one stop lawsuits:
Virus in your mailbox? "Apple, pay me!"
Photos disappear? "Apple, pay me!"
Phone blows up? "Apple, pay me!"
Anything goes wrong at all, "Apple, pay me!"
Of course you give up security sideloading (Score:1)
You can't even be 100% sure you have security loading from app stores. New exploits are created every day and Apple's testing may miss them.
But sideloading obviously has a higher risk because in some cases *no one* is testing them.
And depending on the alternate app stores testing and security protocols it may be more risky than the official app store.
If the people setting up the alternate app store aren't bad actors to begin with.
I use shareware and freeware all the time. The risk is low. But on a phone
Re: Of course you give up security sideloading (Score:2)
Read more (Score:1)
iPhones. read more Vestager said she shares
Submitters and Editors should read more.
Hmm hmm (Score:2)
"The important thing here is, of course, that it's not a shield against competition, because I think customers will not give up neither security nor privacy if they use another app store or if they sideload,"
I'd be really curious to know if the person saying this recently acquired a luxury car or a vacation property.
Security and privacy vs competition (Score:2)