Apple will require notarization for apps from third party app stores, and will disable updates for apps installed via third party app stores if staying outside EU
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.
For a lot of corporations, malice and greed are pretty much the same thing. When a business decision is justified by "Who cares? Do it anyway." the distinction is a matter of words, not actions.
The corporation doesn't love you, nor does it hate you. But you possess economic value, which could be made to belong to the corporation's shareholders.
This is what’s somewhat surprising. If they followed most of the rules, and went a bit off on a few, no one would be as upset and it might even work. Now, I have a feeling the EU is going to be VERY clear about the rules and they aren’t going to be in Apple’s favour at all.
People, if this is important to you and you're of voting age in Europe, the elections are in June! Register and vote for a party that wants to shove their middle fingers into big corpos faces.
You think a multi trillion dollar company is just winging it from a legal standpoint? Or do you think they have worked with the EU to develop the policy within a hair of what they are actually required to do?
I'm pretty sure this is explicitly not allowed because most of the EU laws apply to EU citizens and residents. So if an EU citizen stays outside the EU they aren't allowed to stop following the EU rules.
Apple users will accept anything Apple does to them. In their eyes, Apple can do no wrong. They will defend this all the mental hoops they have available.
I'd like to see Apple hurt, but somehow, I want to see its users hurt even more. They willingly buy these products and even defend them. Things should just get so bad that even the most devout Apple user questions Apple. No idea how bad it has to get, but I'd be very curious to find out.
The problem is that Apple doesn't accept the responsibility. it's the DMA that's doing this to their customers, not Apple. By vilifying the DMA as harmful to privacy and security, Apple gets to make themselves out to be the good guy. When things get worse, Apple can just blame the DMA again.
The DMA was written in good faith. Apple is acting in bad faith. And yes, their customers are too simple minded to think for themselves, which is exactly why Apple can say stuff like "DMA bad" and have millions of people agree after sabotaging the implementation. It's not a surprise the EU wants to curtail that (we'll see if that still stays the case after the elections, when the Apple voters show up at the urns).
What boggles my mind is that the level of sandboxing displayed in Apple's App Store is not really interpretable to me.
I also see something like "the developers indicated they do not collect sensitive information." Yeah, but why would they indicate otherwise if they were malicious parties?
Probably, the only way to get sort of assurance is to choose an open source project, but App Store doesn't guarantee that the code on Github matches the app in the Store.
but App Store doesn't guarantee that the code on Github matches the app in the Store
This is why I like fdroid. They insist on building the app themselves, ensuring that it does indeed match what's on github. Now you need to trust only fdroid to do the right thing. Then again, if they do something bad, someone will recognize it.
You upload the binary to the App Store, and as a part of the release process they may inspect the binary to figure out what it's doing.
They of course don't do that for everything as it's a bit complicated to do for everything, but it can be an effective means to for example figure out when an app is calling an API in a prohibited manner.
Each big company should open its own app store in the EU making the use of iPhone impossible there. People will switch to Android pretty quickly.
If people want Facebook, they need to install the meta store and then install Facebook. A Google product? Install the Google store and then the app. Want Spotify? Install the Spotify store and then Spotify. TikTok? TikTok store and then TikTok...
yes but I want the option to judge software myself. If I want software that has been looked over by Apple I can go to the Apple Appstore. If I want something that doesn't fit their requirements I want the option to go somewhere else.
They can ask users if they want that, I'm sure many of their users do. What they shouldn't do is force people to accept their version of "security and privacy".