I don't think they will. This is significantly less scary for upholding the DMA than the current US government threatening the EU with fines for having it in the first place. (And the DMA is the one thing the EU is entirely unwilling to negotiate on; it's seen as a key component to the EUs sovereignty from other major world powers.)
They didn't blink when it came to the GDPR either for big tech (most of the problems on the level of the EU for GDPR have been that they themselves are subject to it, leading to the occasional "egg on face" situation + the EU/US privacy laws being fundamentally incompatible.)
Let me break it to you, Play store also has a 30% tax. So does Steam, Playstation store, Xbox store, Meta quest store, Nintendo, Samsung etc. Why do people only complain about Apple and everybody else gets a pass?
Because I have the option of using an alternate app store on my Android phone or computer, and I do. Meta, PlayStation, Nintendo, all companies that force me to pay them a cut to install something on my device need to go the way of Apple.
I'm not sure why you thought your point was such a checkmate, as if I have a problem with the company itself, rather than the practice.
The practice as well as the percentage is industry standard by now but i have never heard of anyone complaining about the Meta tax or the Sony tax. It’s always the Apple tax which is a bit weird.
That's probably just because Apple sells more than the other two combined. I find the practice reprehensible no matter whether it's Apple or Amazon doing it.
Apple doesn’t need to spin anything. EU consumers will be pissed about having to travel to another country to buy an iPhone. And Apple will make the revenue anyway.
People were pissed on Microsoft due to BSODs on Windows. Microsoft bent over backwards to test drivers to prevent BSODs and give Windows better name, despite the fact that it was not a problem of Microsoft, but sloppy programmers of those drivers causing BSODs.
Yeah I can almost guarantee that people are going to be mad at Apple.
The issue for Apple is that in the EU, they're still mainly characterized as the company that dragged their feet on using standardized chargers, leading to there being a law on the books that mandates USB-C. (As in, it's obvious to literally everyone that if Apple just used USB-C, that law wouldn't exist, since literally everyone else was willing to use microUSB and then USB-C for their regular charging devices; without Apple, there'd be no incentive to do it, but because they're a major player that refused to co-operate, it's now required.)
That law axed a lot of the second-hand grey market for cheap Apple cables of poor build quality (something Apple also worked towards because their official cables have had poor build quality since forever), and is generally seen as a positive for most people, since everyone who's ever had an Apple device is also familiar with the growing collection of cheap chargers that are varying degrees of functional that comes with it; instead a USB-C charger can often be repurposed to charge e-readers, tablets, lights and so on, while Apple chargers could only be used to charge Apple devices. It also eliminated all the problems with audio docks, where before you had to pick between buying one for Apple and one for Android/everything else.
Basically it's made less e-waste people directly have to engage with, and is generally seen as a good thing... but Apple kept whining about it, so their reputation as a customer-friendly company is in the gutter as a result; even most Apple users I know of still don't even bother trying to defend the company on how bad they are at interoperability/standardization.
To be fair, poor-quality cables are a more recent development at Apple.
It basically follows the Tim Cook takeover, where full on greed has become the "raison d'être" of Apple at the expense of everything else.
I had the 1,5G iPod (10GB variant) which was sold with all the accessories, including a carrying pouch, very nice quality remote (that could be used with any headphones, not just the ones included) and a very nice FireWire cable. It was literally one of the best quality cable I ever used.
The first iPhone also had a pretty decent quality cable (and included a dock).
Back then, iBooks/PowerBooks also included many adaptors for the various video-out standard of the time, that is to be contrasted with their all USB-C release MacBooks, where they basically told their customers: "fuck you, buy the necessary dongles at a nasty markup".
It all went to shit when Apple became very successful with the iPhone and the bean counter fully took over, saving pennies everywhere he could (at scale it does makes a lot of money).
And this is what feels so bad with Apple today, you pay a premium price, only to be taken for a fool and have a mediocre experience in the name of "ecology" (who are they kidding, seriously).
That's why they have been complaining about the EU and DMA for several years now. They are trying to build public support for their case.
This time they are having a bit of a hard time as a lot of people are clearly sick of their shenaningans. However, we are in a bubble of our own, and it's hard to say what the general public will think of it.
Have you looked at enterprise business people / analysts? They would riot if you took their Microsoft products from them. Apple is much easier to get out of for society as a whole since its not nearly as integrated with deep corporate bureaucracies.
I kind of understand them. There is a meme of Microsoft being bad / making bad software but the reality is that they actually make pretty good software with a lot of functionalities that others fail to properly replicate / implement correctly.
The office suite is very strong. You may not see it like that, but for some it doesn't really have any proper equivalent, a lot like some Adobe software. Some get close, but still come up short in many ways.
And Microsoft is pricing their stuff very well. I think that's actually the problem, they can use their hegemony that gives them insane volumes and allows them to set prices at a level so competitive no young outsider can meaningfully compete.
Network effects in computing/software are really nasty since there is a very real lock in effect. We can force format standardization (we dit that!) but that's only one part of the equation. One still has to build the software and that requires a lot of upfront capital cost (to pay the devs) before you can even sell your first unit.
And if we look at what Apple has done with their own Office suite, it's not even close. It's "pretty" but nowhere near a true replacement. It's actually sad that with all the cash Apple has, they are unwilling/unable to really invest in a proper competitive alternative.
The headline currently reads: "Apple threatens to stop selling iPhones in the EU".
The blog post cites an article from The Guardian, with the headline "Apple calls for changes to anti-monopoly laws and says it may stop shipping to the EU". In that article, nothing is mentioned about ceasing iPhone sales. It does say: "warning that unless it is amended the company could stop shipping some products and services to the 27-country bloc" and elsewhere: "It did not specify which products could in future be prevented from being distributed in the EU, but said that the Apple Watch, first released a decade ago, might not be released today in the EU"
The actual press release from Apple seems to be https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/the-digital-markets-a... and if there's anything in there that supports the headline of this HN submission, it's too subtle for me to find. I think this submission is unreasonably sensationalized, with the predictable effect that the comments here are mostly knee-jerk reactions to the (false) headline instead of discussion of the validity or lack thereof of any specific complaints from Apple.
What's news to me is apparently the European Commission is required to conduct a review of the DMA every three years, including collecting feedback from the public (both users and businesses). So Apple's complaints aren't coming out of the blue; they're part of that feedback process.
> And according to the European Commission, under the DMA, it’s illegal for us to share these features with Apple users until we bring them to other companies’ products. If we shared them any sooner, we’d be fined and potentially forced to stop shipping our products in the EU.
That's still about withholding specific features, not about abandoning entire product lines in the EU. And it's quite the opposite of a threat from Apple to the EU.
Hasn't Apple been pretty consistent in choosing to ship with fewer features where necessary rather than not ship at all? Given that, the "If we shared them any sooner" bit only makes sense as an explanation for why Apple's choosing their usual course of action, not as a threat to change course and pull out of the EU market.
So far they’ve chosen to go with a simple feature flag but eventually it may require a pullout. Especially if the EU fines them for not releasing features in the EU.
> So far they’ve chosen to go with a simple feature flag but eventually it may require a pullout.
Isn't that entirely your speculation, not supported by anything Apple has actually said or done?
As far as I can recall, the most notable example of an Apple product getting a limited rather than global release was the Vision Pro—and that was just a slow roll-out to new countries, not exclusion from the entire EU. And on the other hand, there's a long list of products where Apple has shipped with regional differences in features, both software and hardware.
> Especially if the EU fines them for not releasing features in the EU.
Has the EU actually made that threat yet? Because it would be quite a stretch to accuse Apple of making a threat to the EU in response to a threat from the EU that hasn't actually been stated.
Oh no, how will we survive? Everybody knows that these threats are hollow (Apple's stock price would take a gigantic hit) but even if they followed through I'm pretty sure we would hardly notice. If both Apple and Google stopped trading here then that might actually be good and create enough oxygen for local competition to flourish.
> But EU consumers will be very angry at Brussels.
Why would they be angry at Brussels? If Apple decides to pull out of the EU market that's on them. EU citizens will be a lot less angry at Brussels than Apple's shareholders will be.
EU consumers will travel to other countries or buy through second hand markets, which is what happens in Russia now. Apple will lose little revenue. Apple can easily spin this as a win to shareholders showing how much competitive advantage was preserved by not having to build the EUs interoperability demands.
In the end the EU consumer gains nothing from all of this but loses their beloved Apple devices.
Well, then Apple should do it, tomorrow. For sure it won't even register on their annual report then.
> In the end the EU consumer gains nothing from all of this but loses their beloved Apple devices.
I don't think I have an emotional connection with my phone, it serves to call people, message them and to perform other useful functions and if it does not it gets replaced. I'm happy with it, it's a solid piece of gear and it has served me well. But emotional connections with brands or pieces of easily replaceable hardware are unhealthy.
Can you have an "anti-"emotional connection to a brand? The iPhone for me is missing a critical feature, which is ability to run the software I choose even if it didn't come from the App Store. Which means that brand is dead to me until that situation changes.
Not particularly happy with Google for other reasons either. There are some days I want to go back to the days of Windows Mobile ROM kitchens and PalmOS. At least it wasn't such a monoculture back then.
Yes, that's a problem, but this is akin to all of the other ways in which things are no longer properly sold but come with all kinds of strings attached. My computers are mine, and I determine what is being run on them. I realize that puts me in a - small - minority but I prefer to own things than to rent them. I don't want an ongoing relationship with vendors beyond the initial transaction and possibly warranty issues.
This informs a lot of my choices. It's the reason my car is old, it's the reason my computer is running Linux, it is the reason why I don't wear branded apparel and it helped me decide where to bank. But I fear that it is a losing battle.
The monoculture that you refer to creates choke points and legislators love those. It gives an illusion of control, but actually it is just a massive security risk.
Press releases are for the public, they are essentially holding their own users hostage, and users that don't see this for what it is deserve all the misery they will get. But you're not going to be able to pretend that Apple isn't solely responsible for following the law in those places where they want to make money. If they don't want to comply with the law that is on them, not on the legislators. And it's high time that these companies learned they are not larger than the nation states where they operate, no matter how rich they are.
> obviously they’re going to try and talk it out first with the EU
Will they? They were never willing to talk it out to begin with. And now they completely walked out:
--- start quote ---
“Apple has simply contested every little bit of the DMA [Digital Markets Act] since its entry into application,” said Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier. “This undermines the company’s narrative of wanting to be fully cooperative with the Commission.”
...
“Results of this positive engagement? After two months, Apple came back and asked us to scrap everything,” he said
It's a game of leverage. Apple is stoking the fire to make consumers angry hoping the EU to pull back. EU is pushing forward hoping that there will not be enough popular opinion to sway its decision. In this case, I think EU has far bigger leverage.
I don't think so... EU is only 7% of their revenue globally according to their CFO, and DMA can fine them up to 10% of global revenue, so it may actually be cheaper to just leave the market.
Well, guess what: you should have because the evidence actually shows that indeed, that 7% number was taken out of context. But it suited your narrative and so you adopted it and came up with a rationalization for that adoption.
>Well, guess what: you should have because the evidence actually shows that indeed, that 7% number was taken out of context.
It was taken out of context by some random blogger, whereas the gp was implying company executives were lying. My point that we should trust company executives over random internet commenters still holds.
That wasn't your point, and you are well aware of it. Why not simply apologize, say you got it wrong and move on? After all, you chose to believe the random blogger before. Besides that, believing execs of large US companies is a thing that I would not do without applying my critical thinking skills and a 7% figure is so ridiculously low that even if an exec said it it should still give you pause as to its correctness because even at face value that seems quite unbelievable.
Look, you chose to run with a figure that was nonsense at face value just because it suited your narrative. You then defended the figure and you made up a narrative about how executives should be believed over random commenters, which was - at best - a strawman. You then keep digging yourself into ever deeper holes without simply coming out and saying that you were wrong to believe the initial figure without any critical thought. The longer you keep this up the more silly you look.
> "Given the threat of securities fraud lawsuits, I'm liable to believe them over some random commenter casting doubt with zero evidence."
That was your statement, but - surprise - no exec made the claim that you chose to believe. And if you had thought for 10 seconds you'd have realized that no such claim could have been made because the figure is clearly non-sensical. Oh, and US execs fairly routinely lie, both in court and outside of it. The fact that they get away with it is not proof that they're not doing it.
>Look, you chose to run with a figure that was nonsense at face value just because it suited your narrative. You then defended the figure and you made up a narrative about how executives should be believed over random commenters, which was - at best - a strawman. You then keep digging yourself into ever deeper holes without simply coming out and saying that you were wrong to believe the initial figure without any critical thought. The longer you keep this up the more silly you look.
I suggest you read over the comment chain more carefully and note the authors. I jumped in at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45405359 and was specifically objecting to the part of the comment that was claiming the executive was lying with no evidence. I made no such claims or arguments based on the 7% figure.
Apple willfully violated a 2021 injunction that came out of the Epic Games case, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in a court filing on Wednesday.
She wrote that Apple Vice President of Finance Alex Roman “outright lied” to the court about when Apple had decided to levy a 27% fee on some purchases linked to its App Store.
“Neither Apple, nor its counsel, corrected the, now obvious, lies,” Rogers wrote, saying that she considers Apple to “to have adopted the lies and misrepresentations to this Court.”
Rogers added that she referred the matter to U.S. attorneys to investigate whether to pursue criminal contempt proceedings on both Roman and Apple.
Apple's execs literally lie under oath in a court of law. I trust them about as far as I can throw them. They are the same people claiming they don't know if AppStore is profitable or not.
Still plenty rich in comparison to the rest of the world while providing richer lives to common people than most places in the USA can provide to their citizens.
Leaning on GDP as this all-encompassing metric is rather absurd, GDP was adopted because it's an easy metric to calculate, not because it provides the most insights on how life is at some place on Earth.
Yes, per capita per country versus per capita per continent. The two simply are not comparable. You keep arguing in bad faith, please stop doing that, it is degrading the level of discourse here.
Yes, because then you'd see that the EU is not the homogeneous entity that you seem to think it is.
You could compare the USA to Switzerland or the Netherlands on a per-capita basis or you could pick Romania or Bulgaria and come away with a completely different impression. The main difference is that countries that have been living under the Russian boot for 50 odd years are still recovering and the remainder is far wealthier than the USA and has a smaller wealth gap between rich and poor. This goes in particular for Germany which is still to this day spending large amounts of money to fund the recovery of the eastern part of Germany, but fortunately, unlike Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltics they have a large enough industrial base to be able to do so. To lump that all together makes zero sense and shows a lack of appreciation of both history and statistics.
>You could compare the USA to Switzerland or the Netherlands on a per-capita basis or you could pick Romania or Bulgaria and come away with a completely different impression.
You can make the same granularity arguments at the country level as well, for instance Germany vs California or Missouri. Does that mean cross country comparisons are bunk as well? What makes "country" the level of subdivision that's acceptable compared to neighborhood, city, county, state, country, or continent?
I think we all know what the definition of a country is. If you decide to compare continents and countries as though they are one and the same that is on you.
But EU countries are closer to US states, except that any two US states are still far more homogeneous than any two EU countries are.
One good basic principle for arguing about stuff is to agree on the meaning of certain words. If you want to compare countries then do so. If you want to compare states with countries, you're welcome to do so too, but you have to take into account the whole range then. But you can't just lump 27 countries on a pile, compute an average and draw a conclusion when comparing it to a single continent sized country.
Besides that, if you take out California the US picture skews downwards considerably, so on that scale other US states have their work cut out for them. No need to compete with Switzerland or the Netherlands for GDP, compete with California first. And that whole discussion still ignores massive wealth generated in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and other places.
The whole idea that you can just collapse a very complex comparison to a single number and call it a day is fatally flawed.
Actually, it's far closer to the truth than you may think.
France? Their debt is killing their country and causing escalating political crises.
Germany? Energy costs are killing their competitiveness. Hard to compete with energy costs of $0.44 per kWh on average; before labor costs.
Italy? Need I say more? Their economy is notoriously stagnant.
The remaining 24 EU countries make up less than 50% of the EU's GDP. Meanwhile, US and EU GDP went from almost 1:1 in 2008, to 1:0.65 and still declining.
To give you a sense of how severe Germany's problems are, the US state of Mississippi is almost ready to pass Germany's GDP per capita.
You seem to enjoy making nonsense comparisons. But I wonder why you do this, is there something in it for you to make it seem as though the USA is doing fine when the EU is - according to you - not?
I've actually lived on both sides of the Atlantic. And there is wealth on both sides and there is poverty on both sides. But the gap between rich and poor is much more pronounced on the US side than in the EU. Energy costs are a small fraction of the total expenses. Mississippi is not a good comparison to Germany (last I checked half of Mississippi was not living under the russian boot for 50 years) and if you just stare at the GDP you will miss a lot of quality-of-life indicators that would make me choose to live in Germany long before I would want to live in a backwater state in the USA. And that's assuming the USA will survive the current onslaught on its institutions.
So stop bullshitting and start thinking about what the real world differences are between countries and then strive to improve the one you can have an effect on rather than just seeing this as a numerical game of put-downs that make absolutely no sense at all.
3. None of that proves that the bullshit about revenue
Do you know how I know that? Because that "7%" comes from this quote: "Just to keep it in context, the changes apply to the EU market, which represents roughly 7% of our global App Store revenue."
App Store revenue is not all of Apple's revenue. Oh, and those same execs claim they don't even know if App Store makes money or loses it, so how would they know.
As for what people are buying and not buying, according to statcounter [0], the smartphone market in the EU is a third Apple, a third Samsung, and then the final third is a scattershot of other Android devices, primarily Xiaomi.
This is in contrast with a 57.27% foothold in the US. It's a different world.
To put it into perhaps an even more grappling perspective, that whole green bubble vs blue bubble thing? I've first heard of it only just a few years ago from Marques Brownlee on YouTube. Never encountered it in real life prior or since.
Funny you're invoking that when the fact that someone chose to buy apple at all means they thought it was the best option, according to their opinion. By banning apple you're necessarily making those people buy a crappier phone.
It's clear from your posting, here and elsewhere in this comments thread, that you believe that the EU should back off of the pressure on Apple.
What is driving your motivated reasoning? Why are you so invested in the ability for Apple to continue to have the ability to keep their app store locked down? How do you benefit from this decision?
Funny, I have an android phone because I need it for one particular project but otherwise my Nokia N-800 serves me very well. It is entirely distraction free, has insane battery life (easily more than a week even when used intensively) and it can serve as a WiFi access point for my laptop in case I need to use the internet while on the go. It is also indestructible, and that's one reason why I don't buy a new phone every year or two, the one I have 'just works' and has done so for years. I got it just before COVID hit so it's probably close to 6 years old now.
I'm nowhere near a 2 year upgrade cycle but the fact that you think a 18 year old phone serves you "very well", and therefore Nokia phones aren't crappy shows how out of touch you are. There's zero chance the average person would think the same.
lack of updates is a feature not a bug. How many times have you uploaded new firmware into your washing machine? I personally never have, it is more than 10 years old and still washing laundry.
Not only did Apple and Google divebomb their sales, but Nokia's own hardware was plagued with bugs and comparatively inadequate features, like small displays and slow CPUs.
MS would later re-sell Nokia to HMD in 2016, who still release some feature-phones, including ones running an "S30+" OS that has nothing to do with Symbian.
I have one of these running KaiOS and it works surprisingly well. It also seems to be immune to battery life degradation (it works just as well as it did when I got it) and in general has been rock solid. I think in the almost six years that I've had it, it has spontaneously rebooted once and other than that it just works. It is simple, has buttons (no touch screen), has an earphone jack and is so solid you can drop it and the chance is larger that you damage the thing it lands on that that you damage the phone. It still looks like new in spite of being in my pocket together with keys and other stuff. I'd buy another in a heartbeat if this one ever dies but I suspect it will just keep on working.
Asian brands dominate the phone market in Europe with phones spanning the whole gamut of quality and flagships which are in every way comparable if not superior to what Apple offers.
Honestly even if Google somehow decided to stop selling Android to Europe, something which seems extremely unlikely, it would swiftly be replaced by Chinese alternatives with no obvious loss of functionality.
Apple has zero leverage with the "we will stop selling" strategy. It’s just there so they look less pathetic when it comes to what they are actually doing: bribing Trump so he intervenes for them. We really have come a long way from the "Think different" company.
> Honestly even if Google somehow decided to stop selling Android to Europe, something which seems extremely unlikely, it would swiftly be replaced by Chinese alternatives with no obvious loss of functionality.
Exactly, it would be a brutal self own of Apple and Google and losing control over whole European market due to refusing to implement mild regulations. Pure bluff on Apple's and Google's side.
Ah yes, the heavy Brussels thumb of ... checks notes ... "don't track your users, don't hinder competition and let people chose if they want algorithmically generated slop"
Chat Control hasn't happened, and if it does, the court will shut it down. (It's still worth fighting, but it's not something that non-activists need to worry about.)
One can't rely on courts only to protect civil freedoms. If and when totalitarian measures become politically acceptable and desired, the politicians will simply amend the EU treaties and national constitutions to allow mass surveillance, and disband or subvert CoE and other limitations to their power.
Or, as Apple and Google may bet, the EU does not have the talent required to make a good smartphone without reliance on China, the US, or other unfavorable parties, which defeat most advantages of supposedly local development.
They are calling the EU's bluff, and it's possibly a smart business decision to do so.
Good for him. As a white, semi wealthy guy working for a US company (Transmeta) the move made good sense for him. But it does not in any way diminish the fact that Linux has EU roots, as does Nokia and that both of these hail originally from Finland.
Eh, plenty of Chinese companies very used to government regulation that would thrive in the EU and not be bothered by their (relatively lesser) regulations.
It's not that China won't thrive in the EU; it's that from the EU's perspective, reliance on China may be even worse. Especially morally, considering China has no problem trading with Russia.
> The other part being, you don’t really have to write stuff down as much when you can just manipulate subjects of your authoritarian regime at will.
That creates a web of implicit rules that need to be complied with just as much as if they were written down, while having the downside of unclear boundaries and exceptions. An environment with more rules, but with them written in ink and with lawyers that can be consulted to interpret them is preferable.
Do it. It would be the beginning of the end which needs to come. The only market they would have monopoly left would be USA, due to the lock-in of iMessage and encouragement of kids to bully others who can't afford expensive iPhones.
The unstable driver issue exactly why Apple should not make devices interoperable as the EU demands. If they comply with the EU demand and then the device performance is bad due to crappy third party integrations, consumers will blame Apple. If consumers can buy Apple devices everywhere except the EU they will blame the EU not Apple.
Few die hards? We have an actual case study: Russia. Apple does not sell in Russia anymore but market share has increased.
Here’s a comparison of iOS share in Russia (mobile OS) between August 2025 vs August 2023, using StatCounter data:
• August 2025: iOS ~ 31.97 %
• August 2023: iOS ~ 27 % (approximately) — StatCounter’s historical data shows iOS had around 26-28 % share in Russia in mid-2023
So between August 2023 and August 2025, iOS’s share in Russia appears to have increased by about 4–6 percentage points (from ~27% → ~32%).
As you see Apple is willing to chase money despite sanctions. If they would be serious, there would be 0% iOS devices in Russia, because we both know that iPhones can be remotely locked.
Now compare tiny Russian market to European market. Apple is making obvious empty bluff.
The Russian market is not tiny, it is literally the largest economy in Europe with the highest GDP per capita for 2025 when adjusted for PPP. It is also has the highest population in Europe.
If they can pull out of Russia and lose nothing why can’t they pull out of the EU?
Despite Apple’s exit from Russia after the 2022 invasion, StatCounter data shows iOS share actually rose from ~27.5% in Aug 2021 to ~32% in 2025 in Russia.
Russian market has been less than 1% of Apple's revenue
European market is 25% Apple's revenue (7% is just App Store revenue)
Russian market is tiny compared to Europe + they were forced to do it via sanctions or risk being sanctioned themselves, so it is easy for Apple to tell we have to leave this market (even that they really did not, otherwise Russians would not be able to i.e. pay for development licenses). Leaving Europe is entirely Apple's decision without somebody forcing their hand.
Public companies will happily can the entire management team if they cause as little as a 5% dip in stock price. Apples EU revenue is larger than China and Japan combined. Voluntarily forfeiting that is like the modern management equivalent of ritual self-sacrifice: afterwards, they would have so much unsold stock on their hands that it’s going to tank prices worldwide.
> Apples EU revenue is larger than China and Japan combined.
I think you've confused 'Europe' in Apple's reporting (which actually includes all of the middle east) for the EU (which notably excludes the UK, Norway, Russia, etc.)
Apple doesn't report it's EU revenue (and there's confusion about numbers reported on an analyst call in 2024.)
I don’t think it’s a bluff. This is more than just a revenue calculation, this is about giving up control of how your hardware and software can be built. If the EU can dictate what features should be included in a software release, that has massive engineering implications for an ecosystem as vast as Apple’s. Simple features like Live Translation or iPhone Mirroring become 10x more complex to build when you need to test and support other vendor devices. In fact some features become downright impossible if you require interoperability. I’m with Apple on this one. If a country could dictate to me that I need to make my engineering 10x more complex to support their whims and can’t build certain features, then I would seriously consider quitting that country regardless of revenue. This is about slowing down the pace of development and adding engineering complexity to everything worldwide, not just revenue.
> that has massive engineering implications for an ecosystem as vast as Apple’s.
That is Apple's problems. All Eu says is "do not deliberatly hamper competition and don't install artificial barriers to differentiate your products".
Apple has had no issues complying with every single request from any government.
> Simple features like Live Translation or iPhone Mirroring become 10x more complex to build when you need to test and support other vendor devices.
You don't have to test and support them on vendor devices. You either provide an API, or let "vendor devices" implement the same features. This has never been such big of an issue.
> In fact some features become downright impossible if you require interoperability.
Then those features are either not needed, or it's Apple's own fault (e.g. for preventing others from building the same feature set).
It's insane to me that Hacker News, of all places, would argue that walled gardens are good, actually. Ponder this article, for example: "Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones" https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
> This is about slowing down the pace of development and adding engineering complexity to everything worldwide
The only ones insisting and making it so are Apple. A great example is this: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/14/dma-compliance-default-ma... Apple lets users in the EU set their default maps and navigation app. But only in the EU. They literally made the whole thing more complex for themselves by restricting this feature just to the EU even though this clearly is a feature that benefits users.
It's the exact same thing with the rest of the "impossible features".
> don't install artificial barriers to differentiate your products
Some barriers are not artificial. I’m am an engineer and many of Apple’s engineering feats are only possible due to highly controlled interfaces. See for example audio applications that have very high performance requirements, such as low latency audio. It is literally impossible to build this on Android due to the interoperability layer being too slow. Many useful features on Apple devices take advantage of the highly tuned performance that can only happen on devices in the same ecosystem. Take for example Live Translation on AirPods. It’s very hard to get the same level of performance over a public API. Lots of Apple Silicon advantages in battery usage come about due to their deep integration with all parts of the hardware stack — that level of performance would be impossible over an interoperable stack. This is not about walled gardens, this is about building better performing devices with better experiences. It is much harder, near impossible, to build Apple-quality experiences over third party hardware.
I am completely against artificial walled gardens and artificial barriers but I believe many of Apple’s strict barriers are real engineering performance advantages.
It’s literally impossible to build realtime audio apps with ultra low latency on Android. People have been trying for decades. Not trivial at all.
Microsoft and Google and open source devs have tried to build something as good as a MacBook Pro for decades and failed. Because the extremely high performance and polished experience comes from the highly integrated hardware and software stack that only Apple has. Precisely because it is not interoperable. I as an engineer prefer to support fewer devices and make the experience with those few devices better rather than support lots of devices and integrations but crappily.
Again, no one expects Apple to build low latency audio for others. Literally no one. Not even EU.
That is not what Apple is told to do.
I've provided two links to examples of what Apple is asked to do, and you ignored both. Just like Apple. Pretending that people are asking it to do impossible and totally unrelated things.
Exactly. Even limiting of features is extremely damaging to Apple's brand as they are stunting their own phones and making competitors looks much better in comparation.
Sounds like Apple are out of touch with how this game works. Apple, the EU took away your lightning port. They are not afraid to take the entire device away. Playing chicken with your best selling devices cannot end well for you.
Sounds like you are out of touch with consumers. EU consumers would not be happy if they had to travel to another country to buy Apple devices.
Apple has far more leverage than the EU in this case. Millions of unhappy EU consumers are a much more powerful motivator than a few billion lost in revenue for a company as rich as Apple.
Apple would recoup most of the lost revenue through black market and secondhand sales anyway.
The EU should go even farther. Force hardware vendors to decouple from services.
Eg. AirPods work better with iPhones than Bluetooth. Why? Because of software integration. Apple Photos works better than third party photo management apps because of the OS to application integration.
The EU should require hardware makers to define compatibility tests and anyone that passes the compatibility test can become a drop in replacement for the vendor’s own apps.
This would increase consumer choice, competition, and reduce ecosystem lock-in. All of which will make things better for consumers.
This is more than just about revenue. There is massive engineering cost and complexity involved to support the EU’s demands. Interoperability is not easy to build. It slows down worldwide development pace too.
I’m not convinced that a rule that essentially says ”some API:s you have for your own devices should be made public” is a massively complex engineering project.
Coding and documenting different API:s has been a major part of my day job since about 15 years. The only difference of note for those is the amount of available documentation.
The entire premise of Apple is building highly tuned private APIs. It’s what makes things like Apple Silicon battery performance and power to watt ratio possible. This kind of super fine tuning is practically impossible over a public API boundary, or at least much more difficult task. Take Live Translation for example. It has very tight latency and performance requirements which would be hard to make work over a public API where you can’t control the other device. Many types of audio applications are literally impossible to build on non-Apple devices due to the latency requirements. There is an entire audio ecosystem that cannot exist on Android due to the realtime performance requirements.
The ease of implementation is not part of the question. Apple is just not allowed to hide these API:s (eg. Low latency audio and bluetooth pairing) and then block and punish any competitor who tries to use them.
There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have. If the third party device doesn’t work people will blame Apple even though it’s not their fault. Just like how consumers blamed Microsoft for BSODs even though it wasn’t their fault.
Edit: the evidence for my claim - just look at how realtime audio apps with tight latency requirements can’t work on Android
> There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have.
You have no evidence for any of these two claims. From my professional experience it is 100% possible. Making a API public seldom, if ever, requires changes to called code behaviour. Not punishing competitors who tried to use your API is also not requiring any code changes, it is a policy decision.
Evidence: Open source devs and Google and Microsoft have been trying to build MacBook Pro laptop performance for decades and failed. The entire performance advantage of Apple products is due to their tightly controlled integration of the hardware and
software stack.
Apple consumers have come to expect this level of quality from Apple products. It is unreasonable for the EU to demand interoperability with other products when the very thing that makes Apple products work well depends on tight integrations that are not interoperable.
In order to build a high performance product you have to control all of the API surfaces. Apple devices battery life would suffer if any shoddily written third party device could operate with crappy drivers for it.
Again, that has nothing to do with why Apple considers it okay to punish other companies who wants to use those API:s. Apple is under zero obligation to make the API:s easy to implement, it’s just that they cannot forbid anyone from using them, no matter how complex you imagine them to be. No matter if only engineers at Apple has the mental acuity to understand them, no matter if Apple by laws of nature is the only company in the galaxy that could design such silicon to be able to use the API effectively, and so on… Apple is under no obligation to change the behaviour of their API:s to accommodate competing products, they are just not allowed to hide them from and punish competitors.
I, as an engineer, absolutely support keeping private APIs private in order to preserve the performance of products. This is a good policy decision and a good engineering decision. Allowing others to build products on top of private APIs creates false user expectations. The user doesn't know the difference between a public or private API, they just expect their devices to work properly. If you allow a private API to be abused, then third parties may create crappy products (such as fake AirPods) which will ruin the battery life and security of Apple devices. The user doesn't know who to blame, Apple or the third party. It is absolutely within Apple's rights to protect their private APIs from misuse in order to preserve security and performance of their products for all users. The user is free to choose a different brand if they want interoperability. I, as an Apple user, want security and performance, not interoperability. If I wanted interoperability I would choose Android. The EU has no right to force Apple to become crappier like Android.
It’s not about ease of implementation. It’s impossible to build Apple Silicon level of quality in power to watt performance or realtime audio apps over public APIs. Just look at how open source devs failed to fix battery issues with Framework Laptops or build realtime audio over Android. You can’t get Apple quality performance over a public api.
Then effing let them try? Apple, if you are correct will provide 100% of the best products every time. If it is so impossible, why have a corporate policy to punish competitors who try? They will obviously inevitably fail according to you.
It’s about the fact that opening your API limits your own engineering capabilities. A device with an open API has a different security and performance profile.
So Apple has to sabotage their own devices performance and security to let other people use it. The EU has no business in this.
If Apple provided public APIs for their products their own mobile devices battery life and security would be worse due to crappy third party integrations. Apple achieves high performance experiences precisely because that is a ENGINEERING REQUIREMENT to build high quality products.
At the end of the day - it’s not. Apple could have the greatest tech in the world, the least complexity, but if they don’t consistently show a graph that goes up in terms of revenue- they’ll find themselves irrelevant pretty quickly.
Where are they going to find 25% to cover this loss of revenue? Nowhere
If we want to see what the actual impact on Apple’s market share would be if they pulled out of the EU market, consider Russia as a case study. Since Apple pulled out of Russia in 2022, the market share of iOS devices has remained steady and even slightly increased. Russia is comparatively poor, Apple would lose nothing if they pulled out of the EU because consumers would simply travel to other countries to buy.
Here’s a comparison of iOS share in Russia (mobile OS) between August 2025 vs August 2021, using StatCounter data:
• August 2025: iOS ~ 31.97 %
• August 2021: In 2021, the iOS share in Russia was about 27.52 % (for mobile OS) per StatCounter’s data.
Imagine if the US was to regulate so-called "tech" companies and the surveillance "business model"
Would Apple threaten to stop selling computers with their pre-installed, crippled OS
If they did, what would be left
IMHO
FreeBSD (from which Apple took its UNIX userland) would be left
NetBSD would be left
OpenBSD would be left
Linux would be left (maybe)
To name a few
If these so-called "tech" companies like Apple gave up on surveillance because surveillance was regulated, then we would still have open source volunteer-operated OS projects
I suppose some HN commenter might try to argue
that these OS projects would disappear without certain "tech companies" that do surveillance as a "business" and
that contributions from these so-called "tech" companies are keeping these OS projects going
Apple's "threat" is not credible these Silicon Valley companies have lied too many times. No one is going to believe them
These companies are hell bent on using the internet to conduct surveillance, they cannot stop
AFAIK, those open source OS projects do not try to phone home. Even if they did, the public can remove the surveillance code and re-compile
There is no "app store", no corporate restrictions on what software the computer owner can run
IMHO the compiler toolchains are nicer than "Xcode"; and there's no "Apple Tax"
My love will turn to hate of they do this. That’s the danger with building something people love, it can flip to hatred. They should wield that responsibility carefully.
Or they could buy some emerging European brands, which would have more breathing space as not everyone will want to exchange US Big Brother for Chinese Big Brother.
Nobody believes what Americans say, be that Trump, Elon or Apple. They're all full of shit, and they rarely do what they say. The average junkie is a more reliable source on what Apple will do than Apple itself.
