iOS 17.4 Is Here and Ready For a Whole New Europe

Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: Apple's iOS 17.4 update is now available, introducing new emoji and a cryptographic security protocol for iMessage, alongside some major changes to the App Store and contactless payments for the iPhone platform in Europe. Apple is making several of these changes to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law that aims to make the digital economy fairer by removing unfair advantages that tech giants hold over businesses and end users. iOS 17.4 will allow third-party developers to offer alternative app marketplaces and app downloads to EU users from outside the iOS App Store. Developers wanting to take advantage of this will be required to go through Apple's approval process and pay Apple a "Core Technology Fee" that charges 50 euro cents per install once an app reaches 1 million downloads annually. iPhone owners in the EU will see different update notes that specifically mention new options available for app stores, web browsers, and payment options.

The approval process may take some time, but we know that at least one enterprise-focused app marketplace from Mobivention will be available on March 7th. Epic is also working on releasing the Epic Game Store on iOS in 2024, and software company MacPaw is planning to officially launch its Setapp store in April. iOS 17.4 allows people in the EU to download alternative browser engines that aren't based on Apple's WebKit, such as Chrome and Firefox, with a new choice screen in iOS Safari that will prompt users to select a default browser when opened for the first time. While no browser alternatives have been officially announced, both Google and Mozilla are currently experimenting with new iOS browsers that could eventually be released to the public.

Apple is also introducing new APIs that allow third-party developers to utilize the iPhone's NFC payment chip for contactless payment services besides Apple Pay and Apple Wallet in the European Economic Area. No alternative contactless providers have been confirmed yet, but users will find a list of apps that have requested the feature under Settings > Privacy & Security > Contactless & NFC. While Apple previously revealed it was planning to drop support for progressive web apps (PWAs) in the EU to avoid building "an entirely new integration architecture" around DMA compliance, the company now says it will "continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability" for EU users. However, these homescreen apps will still run using WebKit technology, with no option to be powered by third-party browser engines.

how much will shut down when you are not in EU?

[Joe_Dragon]

how much will shut down when you are not in the EU?
And how fast will the EU force apple to change some of the rules?

Re:

[Smonster]

Pretty easy to geofence an application. In the USA gambling ones are required to do so to comply with various state laws. Hence an app for IOS I have for a sports betting account I have tied to a casino located in my state of residence does not work when I am at my office located across the state line in another state. My guess is the apps already on your phone will load just fine, but no purchases will be able to made until you return to your local jurisdiction. So the alternative App stores, will not be

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Would Apple get away with forcing geographic restrictions on travelling iPhones? It seems unlikely that the EU would allow that, given that it generally considers all rights to apply to EU citizens even when they are abroad.

I'm sure the alternative app stores won't be building any geofencing in themselves.

Re:

[Merk42]

...given that [the EU] generally considers all rights to apply to EU citizens even when they are abroad.

So many choose to ignore this. Like when GDPR first came out and websites just blocked IPs coming from the EU. Sure that covers the majority of cases, but not all.

Re:

[gnasher719]

Would Apple get away with forcing geographic restrictions on travelling iPhones? It seems unlikely that the EU would allow that, given that it generally considers all rights to apply to EU citizens even when they are abroad.

See, you are already confusing things. This isn't about EU citizens. It is (most likely) about EU residents. An Italian citizen living in Australia isn't given the right to alternative app stores, but an Australian citizen living in the Italy is.

There will be something in the DMA terms right now, or it will soon be added, who exactly has the right to use alternative app stores and who doesn't. It must be changeable on my phone, so the Italian moving to Australia and the Australian moving to Italy get the

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

"There are over 100 new emojis!

I look forward to liberal use of lime and broken chain emojis. And the nodding/shaking heads one! Wow, where have you been my whole life?

Wait, what? There are other app stores and anti-quantum iMessage encryption? Uh, Ok...."

Said the typical phone user.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Probably not much.

The "EU detection" is done by the carrier you're on, so presumably as long as you're roaming on an EU sim you're getting the EU version. But if you decide to switch to a US SIM card, well, I guess all that stuff stops working

As for rule changes, the whole web app thing might be the first to change - the EU might declare what Apple did to use Safari again as bad and to restore the ability for users to use their own browser, breaking web apps again turning them into fancy bookmarks. Then two

Re:

[gweihir]

Maybe. Technically, these regulations hold if somebody buys a device from a vendor in the EU, not if they are in the EU. Hence Geofencing may not actually be legal either. Apple could maybe require a proof of residence though when somebody buys an iPhone.

Europe protects the world from big tech abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great that there is a major government force that isn't bought and paid for like the US government.

Republican supreme court justices take bribes from people who they can help with their corruption. One of them even colluded with Trump's coup, yet he walks free.

Trump belongs in prison.

Anyway, in world where the US government is captured by corruption we need Europe even if only to get a fucking usb-c port on a god damned iphone.

Re:

[Computershack]

....aand democrats made up some bullshit excuse about Joe being senile,

I'm British. We get different news to you in the USA. Given what we're seeing of Biden on the news if he's not senile he's doing a damned good job of acting as if he is.

Re:

[nightflameauto]

....aand democrats made up some bullshit excuse about Joe being senile,

I'm British. We get different news to you in the USA. Given what we're seeing of Biden on the news if he's not senile he's doing a damned good job of acting as if he is.

Joe's main qualification to be president, especially over the other doddering fool that we'll be forced to watch and listen to over the course of the next year or so, is that he actually takes input from advisors before making decisions. Now, he doesn't always follow that input, but at least he's willing to hear it.

Republican Stance: "TRUMP IS THE NEW GOD! BOW BEFORE HIM AND WORSHIP!"

Democrat Stance: "Leave doddering grandpa alone. At least he's trying."

Non-religiously devoted politically interested folks:

I see Apple has gotten scared...

[gweihir]

May have something to do with the _other_ $1.8B fine they just got in the EU for anti-competitive practices. I would not have expected them to bow down this quickly. But in the end, Apple just wants to make money and everything else is secondary.

"Core technology fee"

[DrXym]

This feels more like a fuck you shakedown fee. Apple again demonstrating that anytime the EU introduces legislation designed to make the market place more fair they will find a way to subvert it. Slapping onerous fees on breakaway apps is exactly that. I wonder how much it actually costs Apple to facilitate an app download - a cent? Whatever it is, they could have billed the way cloud services do for actual usage of these "core technologies" rather than something clearly designed to punish apps trying to breakaway.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

This feels more like a fuck you shakedown fee. Apple again demonstrating that anytime the EU introduces legislation designed to make the market place more fair they will find a way to subvert it. Slapping onerous fees on breakaway apps is exactly that. I wonder how much it actually costs Apple to facilitate an app download - a cent? Whatever it is, they could have billed the way cloud services do for actual usage of these "core technologies" rather than something clearly designed to punish apps trying to br

Re:

[Schoinobates Volans]

It's basically paying Apple to develop apps for their platform.

And you used to do that - this isn't new - you had to pay for SDKs and other things in order to do software development.

The deep difference is that while the development tools from the platform maker were products in their own right that cost money, there was no barrier, legal or technical, to using different tools by another vendor. E.g. Borland for a long time had competitive "SDKs" (they were not called like that yet) for Microsoft OS, and one could use these tools and not pay Microsoft anything (other than the OS licensing fee for using the OS, like any user).

Likewise, for the UNIXes, the GNU project developed competitiv

This should be fun

[ACForever]

given apple cant code for shit regularly , i bet their code written maliciously will be orders of magnitude worse.

"cryptographic security protocol for iMessage"

[kabulykos]

Years and years of marketing about security and privacy, only to get clowned by a dev team of like 8 people at Beeper reverse-engineering their bread & butter.

I guess they're "fixing" it quickly.

More funny than surprising, really.