As far as I can tell this basically means that all apps must be approved by Apple to follow their “platform policies for security and privacy” even if publishing on a third party app store. They will also disable updating apps from third party app stores if you stay outside the EU for too long (even if you are a citizen of an EU country, with an Apple account set to the EU region).
The idea that preventing app updates is in line with their claims of protecting security is utterly absurd. “Never attibute to malice what can be explained with stupidity,” but Apple isn’t stupid.
they were just fined with 1.8B because of their anti steering practices. so clearly they don’t always comply
Sure, but it would be illogical to think that a company with seemingly unlimited resources would get fined, and then introduce new that didn’t exactly comply with what was required… I mean, I would think they are working with the EU to ensure it is within a millimeter of what they are allowed. It seems you just don’t like it.
I think it’s a safe bet they had their legal teams sifting through the whole DMA to find a way to comply while making it as obnoxious as possible to the user, the third party providers, and everyone else pretty much.
Though it’s also pretty evident that this is bad faith compliance and not in the spirit of the DMA, so the EU legislators will hopefully slap them with another fine.
Apple will put up with fines if it judges that if they manage to avoid the fine, the financial benefit will outweigh the fine.
If there’s a 50% chance that I stand to make $100m, and a 50% chance to be fined $20m, it makes sense (if I’m unethical, like corporations are) to take that gamble. Even more so if I think I can use lawyers to shift the chances in my favor.
If you’re to make $100m, and there’s a 99% chance to be fined $100m… it still makes sense to risk it, worst case scenario you end up as you were.
The beauty of EU’s laws, is that the fines are set as a % of “global revenue”, not just of revenue in the EU, nor in terms of profits, so large multinational corporations stand to lose way more than what they are likely to gain by not complying.
That’s equivalent to a parking fine for regular people. I know many people who would risk a parking fine if it means that they save a few minutes of searching for a parking spot.
1.8B was the fine they got for anticompetitive behaviour with regards to Apple Music, which is not an insignificant amount for that business unit.
The fines for DMA-violations go up to 10% of global revenue for first-time violations and 20% of global revenue for repeat violations. I would love to see Apple continue fucking around and letting Apple find out in the form of a fine of that magnitude. It would be so damn sweet.
For the first violation, they chose to go for 0.5% instead of the 10%. I’m not holding my breath.