European iPhones are more fun now

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/24/24226946/iphone-eu-regulation-app-stores-fortnite

by hilux • 2 years ago

94 76 2 years ago

irdc3• 2 years ago

I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN as it is on, say, Reddit, but note that this is going to be enabling a lot of innovation in mobile apps in the EU.

politelemon• 2 years ago

on iOs.

These innovations have existed for many years now.

blfr5• 2 years ago

It's not popular because the costs usually outweigh the benefits and when they do, there's rarely a correction. The EU will do something great (roam like at home) or minor but positive (like OP, however we've had USB-C, Firefox, and sideloading on Android anyway) and then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps.

piva00• 2 years ago

and then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps.

The only reason cookie banners are so annoying is due to the people implementing them wanting them to be annoying.

It doesn't need to be, the directive explicitly states that giving or withdrawing consent should be equally easy. All of these annoying cookie banners requiring you to manually toggle 5+ checkboxes for opting out are illegal.

krior• 2 years ago

There is no regulation to make cookie banners annoying, afaik. Plus there are addons that solve this problem.

Could you explain your annoyance with bottle caps?

planb• 2 years ago

The EU will [...] then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps.

You know there's no EU cookie banner insertion agency that intercepts traffic and injects cookie banners - the sites could handle this way less obstrusive.

I'm with you on the attached bottle caps though. It's just a minor annoyance but you really gotta ask: Are environmental benefits really worth the negative reactions to regulation this will spur in the population every time someone tries to drink from a plastic bottle?

timeon• 2 years ago

Regulations are backbone of societies. Most of engineering is heavily regulated except for computer engineering.

dzikimarian4• 2 years ago

I see less targeted ads, when I click "reject" on cookie banners. Also more & more has "reject all" opinion on the top level.

It should be checkbox on browser settings, but overall it works and I like it better than creepy notifications to sell me things that I randomly googled.

pjerem• 2 years ago

Guess what, the EU never mandated websites to add cookies banners.

The reason cookie banners are annoying is because they show you in plain sight how much the site you are visiting doesn’t respect you as a visitor. Worse is that it’s always written in an hypocritical language.

Those websites had a disrespectful and dangerous business model that needed to be regulated. The GDPR have been announced 8 years ago and is implemented since 6 years. It’s nearly a decade old and those websites decided to change nothing except to ad banners.

Otherwise, there are a hella lot websites that don’t show banners because in the first place they decided to have a business model which was respectful of their customers /users.

haizhung• 2 years ago

I would say it is working as intended if the regulators are able to mildly inconvenience you to achieve a greater goal.

Bottle caps are under the top 10 single-use plastic products most often found on European beaches [1], IMHO that’s good enough reason to mandate they be attached to the bottle.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...

yard20102• 2 years ago

I would click on any banner you want as long as I can use my one cable for everything and use Vivaldi browser on my iPhone with uBlock origin built in so I can browse the internet on my phone without the need to worry about catching AIDS or cancer.

Like, apple not allowing to use a browser with an adblocker is like not letting people use condoms. It's spreading diseases.

Good thing Europe is yet again taking the responsible adult role for the sake of the rest of the world.

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B• 2 years ago

Saying that USB-C is a minor benefit feels like American propaganda, or someone bitter.

surgical_fire• 2 years ago

annoy you to no end with cookie banners

That is due to o malicious compliance. The actual problem is the amount of advertisement cookies, how invasive they are, and how advertisers really don't want to let them go.

and attached bottle caps

What major problem is that?

Dalewyn• 2 years ago

I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN as it is on, say, Reddit,

This is an aside, but I remember when Reddit was Liberty Central.

I'm getting too old for this.

filleokus• 2 years ago

It's going to be interesting to see the state of things in a few years.

I'm admittedly in the less pro-regulation camp, but I'm not hopeful this is going to enable much meaningful innovation, rather I'm expecting enshittification via oligopoly.

Sure, there will probably be some apps that use new EU features / APIs to do something cool. Most likely Apple will add those in the "standard" API set. Similar to how jailbreakers and Android have paved the way for e.g third party keyboards or call blocking api's. Emulators are the first example of this.

We will go from the "apple monopoly" to probably an oligopoly, where companies with enough pull effect will start their own stores. To get more info about the users, "own" the relationship, skip (part of) the apple tax etc. Great, now I'll get the pleasure to create yet another account or jump through 47 hoops to cancel my subscription.

I'm also expecting this will sooner or later put the nail in the coffin of the last substantial non-chromium browser user base. "This page is best viewed in Chrome for iOS". Also really looking forward to when some German MDM company will figure out they can innovate some custom phone/messagings apps to improve the "security posture" of my employer.

karmakurtisaani• 2 years ago

I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN

Increasing freedom using regulation is not the right way to do it for our libertarian brethren.

SequoiaHope• 2 years ago

It’s always interesting to share the Mises Institute talk on how intellectual property restrictions are an unfair government-created monopoly on ideas that harms capitalism and see how libertarian the person really is. Many people, of all backgrounds and creeds, have a politics of convenience that is only pro or against things when it benefits them, despite claiming to have a principled stance.

https://youtu.be/cWShFz4d2RY

defrost2• 2 years ago

Cutting to the chase: How can I location fake my iPhone in Australia to act as if it was purchased in and currently in the EU.

Bonus edge question: Is an iPhone visiting the EU an "iPhone in the EU" and subject to the same EU data and open OS etc. regulations as every other (local) phone?

can16358p• 2 years ago

I believe it was tied to the Apple ID and ALSO had some countermeasures against faking location but I might be wrong.

defrost2• 2 years ago

I imagined that was the case, I was also starting a mental countdown clock until the first dot point side loading Ich bin ein Berliner iPhone guide appears.

fpoling• 2 years ago

AppStore location country can only be changed if you have a credit card from a bank in EU with customer address also in EU.

And these days there are strong regulations in EU about bank accounts that pretty much ruled out an option to get a EU credit card while being a tourist that was possible like 8 years ago.

Etheryte• 2 years ago

I travel between different countries every now and then and sometimes need to install apps that are only available in a given country. At least for that case, Apple uses your billing address, which is verified by a payment method. E.g. you need a Dutch domiciled payment method to configure your app store location to be the Netherlands and install apps that are available to locals only. These days many apps are available without geographic restrictions, but far from all. I would imagine they use a similar setup for the whole EU only perks.

berti• 2 years ago

I could not install the Italian train app while travelling in Italy due to this.

gorbypark• 2 years ago

It’s definitely at least partially tied to the Apple account location and just not physical location. I’m a Canadian and have been living in Europe for three years now and don’t get any of these new Europe only features. I’m guessing because my Apple account is still tied to Canada / I use a Canadian credit card on it.

dzhiurgis• 2 years ago

My phones region is Lithuania, iCloud is Lithuania, VPN'd via Lithuania in Airplane mode via Wifi and I still can't get in.

Which kinda sucks because there are legit reasons where you could get caught by this.

Tangent: Unsure what my Homepod region is set to, but after updating my _iPad_ to iOS 18 and changing it's region to US so I get new Siri - the Homepod is not able to execute "Siri find my iPhone" command and bitches about mismatch regions... IIRC I had to change regions too so I get Heyless Siri.

goethes_kind• 2 years ago

Why is there only one Apple, anyway? It does not make sense to me. Their niche is luxury consumerism + overbearing paternalism. I don't think that is hard to replicate.

Since BlackBerry gave up on making smartphones, there is no other phone manufacturer trying for the same market. Sure you can buy an Android with cutting-edge tech specs, but you don't get the Apple customer experience and the brand recognition.

blfr5• 2 years ago

Samsung and Pixel are trying but Apple has the advantage of the integrated ecosystem. Samsung is supposedly approaching it from the angle of their home devices but I don't know how valuable a seamless integration between my phone and a washing machine is.

Also, high-end phones aren't really like luxury goods. I think the margins on a manufactured phone are only ~50%. That may sound like a lot but is pretty close to manufacturing of most not-dead-simple stuff.

slekker2• 2 years ago

It's unfortunate that with Samsung phones you can't uninstall the myriad of bloat apps, not to say of their telemetry volume (compared to Apple at least).

jorvi• 2 years ago

I think the margins on a manufactured phone are only ~50%.

On Android phones, the margins for OEMs are a few % at most, sometimes even in the negative.

epanchin2• 2 years ago

Their niche is trust. You cannot replicate overbearing paternalism as a USP without trust.

If Microsoft only allowed installs from their App Store people would switch to Apple en mass.

gary_0• 2 years ago

I don't think that is hard to replicate.

Oh, sure. Heck, I can do that for you. I'll just need a few billion dollars to pay for the design, hardware and software engineering, manufacturing and QA, and to pay for the massive amount of marketing required to establish a new luxury brand.

Then, in order to beat the network effects of the App Store, I'll need another billion dollars or two in order to bribe the most popular apps to make ports for our new platform, and hire more software engineers to make an API emulation layer... and hire lawyers to defend against Apple claiming the emulation layer violates their IP rights.

(There's no guarantee you'll see a return on those billions, btw.)

Nope, not hard to replicate at all.

SoKamil• 2 years ago

Is there already a browser with its own engine? Does any browser have this planned?

dzikimarian4• 2 years ago

Firefox? Available on Android since forever.

Cockbrand• 2 years ago

None exist yet AFAIK, but at least Chrome is on its way. See e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/PWA/comments/11is5ew/first_look_at_...

hennell• 2 years ago

Made me chuckle that this praise of the EU over USA regulations was unreadable behind a large green privacy notice starting: "We and our 843 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device."

AndyMcConachie• 2 years ago

I recieved no such notice. I'm in the EU, use an Ad Blocker, and NoScript to block JS.

irdc3• 2 years ago

There’s also Consent-O-Matic (https://consentomatic.au.dk/).

antoniojtorres• 2 years ago

Is that supposed to mean that no banner and thus no consent is somehow better?

szszrk• 2 years ago

Without regulation they just sold your data to hundred companies without any chance of you knowing, or ability to deny... and that's better?

epanchin2• 2 years ago

If I wanted an open system I could have bought an android. This is a terrible change, can’t wait to see what my less technologically competent friends have been talked into installing.

yard20102• 2 years ago

It's absolutely amazing that europe is a thing. A world with just the US as the main western power is so lame, everyone cares just about money, no other values, sounds so boring.

Now the average american can look up to something and demand it from the policy makers. God bless Europe.

irdc3• 2 years ago

Seconded! I think competition like this between governments is a good thing. Let the best laws win.

card_zero3• 2 years ago

I don't know that I want a second US, though. I have reservations about the first one.

sofixa• 2 years ago

Let the best laws win

The Brussels effect implies that for now, the EU is winning.

voidr2• 2 years ago

The EU is not as altruistic as it seems, a lot of good looking policies are backed up by bad intentions.

Not having the possibility of a 3rd party app store means that you can never have an app store in the EU, where the 30% stays in the EU.

I also don't believe that the EU is doing a great job, the cookie law didn't accomplish anything other than force companies to pay monthly for a cookie banner service and waste millions. GDPR failed, it just created legal black holes and it's now fine to transfer data to the US, rendering the whole thing ineffective.

I'm an EU citizen and I'm not sure if the EU would have been so keen on USB-C if Apple would have been a company in the EU. This talk about saving the environment fades away at the first sign of economical inconvenience.

aeurielesn2• 2 years ago

AFAIK, there's no such thing as a cookie law, it's about PII consent.

I'm fine knowing in advance how scummy a website is even before I use it by their dark patterns on cookie warnings and thousands of "legitimate interest" partners.

Edit: People should stop whining about the cookie warnings and start being concerned that selling PII is such a common (and not even looked down upon) practice. It's disgusting.

hilux2• 2 years ago

I really don't think "the average american" has a good awareness of events, let alone government regulations, outside the country's borders.

Presumably Apple has some internal calculation of how much $$$$ they would lose by globally standardizing the "European iPhone." But we're unlikely to see that number.

Incidentally, the CrowdStrike snafu had its roots in European regulations.

supermatt2• 2 years ago

How were european regulations to blame for the crowdstrike incident?

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

"Incidentally, the CrowdStrike snafu had its roots in European regulations."

That is some truly twisted logic. Let's blame Microsoft-specific disasters on antitrust regulation. It is not even worthy of being called logic. It is lowbrow spin.

Why not ditch Windows and keep the antitrust regulations.

Oops, we can't because meaningful competition does not exist.

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 2 years ago

In America people keep forgetting that in Europe, everything has 2 years warranty HANDLED BY THE STORE.

Picture Amazon which sells everything. Now, everything that breaks from. Amazon can be returned within TWO YEARS.

European laws are way ahead.

European iPhones are more fun now

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