On average yes, that’s why it’s a bad example. There are many excellent examples of things that can be used to show the massive cost of living issue, wage stagnation, etc. it’s just petrol isn’t a great one.
They also capped credit card fees at 0.3% in 2015. It also included a prohibition on discrimination against any merchant based on eg size or category of goods sold. And as far as I can see neither Mastercard nor Visa had problems staying in business.
Yes! I forgot about this. The EU Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) effectively eliminated the high fixed minimum fees that previously made small-value card transactions unprofitable for merchants.
The net effect of this is that in Poland, for example, you can carry your phone and no wallet, because you can pay literally for everything using your phone. And I do mean everything, I've recently been to a club in Warsaw and the cloakroom had a terminal mounted on the wall, people just tapped their phones.
So you cannot compare it apples to oranges. There is much more regulation in EU.
In EU there is also more consumer protection by default, so charge backs can be rejected by merchants but a consumer can easily take a merchant to court. So capping card fees is also more reasonable.
Also, when a merchant goes bankrupt and customers perform charge-backs it would involve the entire payment chain. First merchant reserves, then acquiring bank, then MasterCard/Visa, then issuing bank (customer), and lastly the customer. With lower card fees, this has impact on the merchant reserves and their risk profile. Furthermore, acquirers can add additional fees on top if needed.
You can also get lower card fees in US if you have a low risk business model.
> You can also get lower card fees in US if you have a low risk business model.
It is only the maximum fee that is capped (along with various provisions for eg transparency). You can also get lower fees in EU, just twenty minutes ago I saw an ad for just such a zero-fee card.
Three months ago a commenter here on HN claimed to me that this will be bad for Apple users:
> 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.
And, competition probably can’t build for it anyway:
> It’s impossible to build Apple Silicon level of quality in power to watt performance or realtime audio apps over public APIs.
And:
> […] Apple has to sabotage their own devices performance and security to let other people use it. The EU has no business in this.
Well, I look forward to next year when we’ll have the receipts and see!
Apple can't perform well with audio on Apple Silicon, either. In 2025 macos is the only OS with audio cracking appearing with CPU load. Even Linux is better
Yeah, this is a regression since macOS Tahoe.
Amazing that it still exists after several patch releases, is audio working not a basic test case for Apple?
I’ve found it to be worst when using Xcode / simulator and having headphones on for music.
sudo killall coreaudiod seems to fix it for a while.
It's ludicrous. I remember when Apple took pride in the audio never stopping. Once a very long time ago my entire Mac froze, even the Force Touch trackpad was unresponsive, but the music kept playing. Now, press Volume Up and the audio stutters. Or AirPods randomly get choppy and then stop playing until you reconnect them. The heck?
I don't think it's CPU-based, but I've always had an issue with my AirPods Max on my iPhone with audio cracking (my AirPods Pro work fine, and the Max works fine with my Mac)
You mean it will benefit Apple’s customers, who prefer headphones not made by Apple? If only the incentive for Apple to improve their interface was that its paying customers will have a better interface.
I really don't understand people who defend Apple on this. The only reason I can imagine is that they're shareholders who don't use any Apple products, or shareholders who use exclusively Apple products and can't understand what sort of poor scrub might want an accessory not made by them.
Strange opinion. Anyone that holds the SP500 (which is probably 99% of HN users between 9am and 5pm PT) are Apple shareholders, and what’s good for Apple is entirely aligned with what’s good for them.
Taking a further step back, this same group of HN users probably understands the straightforward idea that what’s good for Bay Area tech companies is beneficial to them in a much broader sense, since they’re generally employed by them or by a very small group of other companies closely related to them.
You can accuse them of being greedy, selfish, or whatever, but certainly not that they’re unaware of where their interests lie.
Your comment is absolutely spot on, no notes. Wish your attitude was more popular and prevalent around here. My guess is that before 2017 or so it used to be.
Apparently even Apple doesn't share your opinion. They haven't threatened to leave Europe, Japan or the United States in retaliation for App Store regulations.
> I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence.
So do I. And my >20 years in the business gives me the experience and knowledge to see through Apple’s FUD.
> […] but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me.
It is my device. I paid for it. If Apple thinks they deserve more money for what they did they are free to ask me, the customer, for more money.
> […] unelected bureaucratic despots
Aha, the dog whistle of the AfD brand of conspiratorial bullshit ”unelected” nonsense! Career bureaucracy is supposed to be certified and educated, not elected, because that is the only way they can properly implement the laws of the electorate. Bureaucracy still answers to elected officials, but they are supposed to act without political interference and provide specialist knowledge. For the same reason you do not vote on every captain and colonel in the military hierarchy, or every tax collector/auditor in your IRS equivalent, you do not vote on every bureaucrat in the Commission tasked to execute and implement law.
You had me convinced that you were a self-absorbed narcissist at “it is my device” without any self-awareness about the fact that it is your device that you purchased as it is, under those conditions; not some fantastical conditions you imagined you should have.
But you really just emphasized it with the AfD nonsense, as if everyone in the world cares about your little provincial political obsessions. “Eeek, the eradicated Italian ideology of 80+ years ago that I have been conditioned with basic Pavlovian techniques to hate to control my mind is coming for me”. Ever hear of the book 1984 and the purpose of Emmanuel Goldstein? You seem to have totally missed that they used that very same technique on you, they just templated a different event on your little mind.
Are the commission popularly elected? No they are not, child. But do explain your narcissistic rationalization for how being not elected by the relevant populace makes calling them unelected nonsense. You can’t.
Why are you so fixated on running interference for what amounts to being a cult? Do you personally benefit financially from it or something? Nothing else makes any rational, sane sense. At least if you financially benefit from your own subjugation to unelected tyrannical despots in the commission and the council, at least you can say you are corrupted, greedy, and unprincipled… if you have the confidence and character to admit it.
But you lack the most fundamental understanding of how the EU and government, let alone different systems work or are suppressed to work, so I am not sure that your statements allow for any other conclusion than that you are deluding yourself either intentionally or in some belief that you can fool or gaslight me and others.
Besides, let’s have you put on your own thinking cap for a second. Take off the mind control cap for a minute and put your thinking cap on. Ready? Do you think it is smart for the same commission that originates imaginary “legislation” that the parliament votes on like any other dictatorial system’s apparatchiks do, should also be the body overseeing the implementation of that law? It breaks the most fundamental and major human advancement in governance produced by separating powers through the Constitution. You said people should be educated. Forget government education for a second, you seem to lack the ability to think at all. Do you not understand the danger of the legislative also being the executive? It’s basically just a novel form of aristocracy you are defending, a regression, total conflict of interest in abusing power … which they aren’t even elected to.
What has been done to your mind and all of Europe is commonly called a bait and switch, also known as coercive control in basic abuse patterns of toxic relationships.
You’re quite literally just a textbook abused person rationalizing and excusing the behaviors and actions of your abusers, like someone in any other toxic relationship or a cult.
Please reconsider the harm you are doing to the world and yourself too. I get the EU told you there was candy in the windowless panel van, but you have no idea what mistake you are making and are going to make others suffer for.
Your whole post is an ignorant, ugly and hate filled rant of little value, but I will pick out this one trope:
> Not the EU and its blob of unelected bureaucratic despots and unelected Commission of dictators
EU haters have two complaints, that it is unelected and that it takes away sovereignty, yet it consists of the members of national governments that not only elect the various officers of the EU (including the Commission) but also vote on all major decisions of the EU, as well as the directly elected EU parliament. So in fact the EU preserves both sovereignty and the votes of EU citizens, both member governments and citizen representatives must approve all EU actions.
It's a little complicated sure, apparently too complicated for some to understand.
> Frankly, I wish Apple had the non-binary balls to simply just cut off all iPhones in Europe rather than bend to EU despot dictates
Perhaps you should come back when you’re less emotional. Suggesting incredibly poor value for shareholder decision while also being hateful (non-binary balls, indeed) is showing the whole ass. Never go whole ass.
You're getting downvoted but it's absolutely true that people simply don't want to (or are incapable) of considering second and third order effects that arise from applying interventions on systems that they do not understand.
HN should really just do away with the down/negative voting or at the least only use it for order sorting, not “points”. The point-punishment only enables abusive and toxic people and behaviors.
I for one believe every human has equal worth and right to speak whatever they want. It may not be relevant, important, smart, or even benevolent; but I still think they should be allowed to say it and even more importantly those who choose to, should be afforded the ability to see/read/hear it. Everything else is just authoritarian, even if it’s just some narcissist who believes HE/SHE is the authority over someone else.
> The point-punishment only enables abusive and toxic people and behaviors.
Actually that's what it's fighting, people like you.
> I for one believe every human...
People can say what they like, that doesn't mean anyone has to listen to it. Freedom of speech also means the ability to silence speech you don't like.
You don't have the right to spread hate and division on a company's website any more than pedophiles have a right to talk to people's children about sex. In both cases the ability to silence speech is fundamental.
HN chooses what kind of discussion it wants to have because doing otherwise would block the sort of speech it wants to host.
I know this will be hard for you to understand, but if you think about it for a while it makes perfect sense.
It's akin to physical autonomy meaning you can't trespass.
> A completely meaningless and self-defeating argument.
Your example is literally true: in Texas you have the right to kill someone entering your home without permission.
So far from being "meaningless and self-defeating", it's reality.
Just like you can't walk on my property without my permission, you can't speak on my property without my permission, including my website. I decide who speaks and who doesn't there.
Government intervention like forbidding led-based paints or asbestos in homes? Or government intervention like doing something about the ozone depletion? Government intervention like forbidding roaming fees? Intervention like requiring 3-point seat belts? Like progressive taxation? Like forbidding discrimination based on skin colour? Like air travel safety? Like a max ceiling on credit card fees?
Abortion abolition in states that are causing women to die because doctors are afraid to perform them even when it puts the woman’s life in danger not to perform them.
It even put the life of a Republican lawmaker in dander in Florida. Of course she blamed democrats.
- Drastic overregulation of nuclear energy in the US, resulting in fossil-fuel pollution measurable in gigatons over the past several decades accompanied by literally countless illnesses and premature deaths.
- Premature mandates for airbags in cars that resulted in hundreds of needless child deaths because the technology wasn't yet safe enough for universal deployment. A scenario that's playing out right now with misfeatures like automated emergency braking.
- The Jones Act (Merchant Marine Act of 1920), whose effects are too convoluted to go into here.
- Misguided, market-distorting housing policies, ranging across the spectrum from rent control to Proposition 13.
- Many if not most aspects of the War on Drugs, including but not limited to mandatory minimum sentencing and de-facto hardwiring of racial bias into the justice system.
Okay, using that definition, Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree, my local regional grocery store, Trader Joe's and Ralph's are monopolies as well. They own their shelves and store space, and are the sole arbiters responsible for deciding what is sold within them.
Okay, so it has to be something you purchase - we're slowly getting closer to the true opinion here.
Sony is a monopoly as well then? They decide what gets sold in the Playstation store. Same with Nintendo.
Ford and Tesla are monopolies, they solely decide what is software is sold or used in their car's infotainment center stores, despite the fact that I have purchased the car!
AWS is a monopoly, despite the fact that I purchase an EC2 instance from them for one year they will not let me run certain kinds of software on it (Parler, some crypto, etc.)
Hilarious opinion. Of course they’re not, Tesla and Ford don’t have a dominant market share anywhere and have a tremendous amount of competitors. I think it would help you to take a look at what the word monopoly means.
non-apple headphones work just fine with Apple products. In fact, Apple's bluetooth stack seem to work best among all the portable devices I come across (no random droppings, connects on first try etc.)
My iPhone has plenty of trouble connecting to various devices at times. God forbid it has to manage connecting to my car and my headphones at once. It works OK most of the time, but at least once a week it proves to be a problem.
They have nifty apple-only features, like you can hold them close to the iPhone and they'll pop up and pair with a neat UI.
It's mostly gimicky, but it does give the user the impression that the apple Air pods are higher quality because they have all these things thought out. In actuality, Apple just made it so they're the only ones who can do that.
I was unconvinced till I switched my devices, one by one, to Apple products a few years ago. They really do just work, especially with specification abiding devices.
I will say, I have an Apple device minority ecosystem, and it seems to be that the Apple devices are the bad citizens there.
For example, I have Sony and Bose headphones with bluetooth multi point. The way this is supposed to work for example is that I can connect them to my PC and my smartphone and have my PC playing videos or whatever, and my phone can override that when something "priority" like a phone call comes in.
Except if the iPad is one of the connected devices, then it will claim priority once a minute or so, _even if it's playing no audio_, thereby interrupting other audio streams pointlessly. This makes all the other devices look like they can't play audio and the iPad can, and I'm sure the iPad plays nice with airpods, but it seems weird to me that every non-Apple combination of devices I hve also plays nice with each other.
- Reliable internet sharing, especially when connection is spotty, and when your connection switches between operators or countries
- Making alarms randomly silent. I missed a flight once because of this. There is no excuse for this.
- Randomly not working AirPlay
- GPS is terrible compared to any of my previous Androids. Even my first Android in 2010 was better than this.
- Finding an operator can take a loooong time after crossing border
- Random restrictions in App Store, like no torrent clients
- Generally terrible keyboard for my native language (Hungarian). Prediction and basic accent fixing doesn’t work at all. The exception is when I don’t need to change a word with diacritics… when the keyboard’s dictionary clearly contains them
- Apple Maps is still a joke. Many times it doesn’t load the underlying map layer at all. I switch to Google Maps search for what I want, finding it, reading some info, looking some images, then switching back to Apple Maps, and it still doesn’t load. Also, navigation and speed limit information are unreliable to say the least.
- Heavily underdocumented MacOS virtualization API, and half the features can’t be used in a real environment, but these restrictions are completely undocumented
- Wanting to have a running DNS server is a challenge on MacOS
- Unusable GPU when no monitor is connected
- You basically need to turn off all security features in MacOS to allow some basic automation, like with FaceTime
- Generally terrible compatibility with anything non Apple. Do you want to show your photos on your friend’s random TV without hassle? Good luck.
- Many built in features (eg SSH, VNC) are heavily restricted, and good luck if you want to replace them cleanly. Most information on internet is “just use the built in solution”. Also they are many times completely insecure.
There are hacks for these, but “they just work” is not true at all. On the level of how “they just work”, top level Android and Windows devices are also on that level for more than a decade in case of Android, and at least 20 years for Windows (if not more). Maybe Apple TV is my only device which just works without hitting some quirks. Especially compared to my other TV and TV adjacent devices. But even here its FaceTime solution, let’s say “interesting”.
The man who fancies himself a modern-day Sauron (yes! [1]), who says “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." and who wants to assemble a neo-theocracy by a wealthy elite does something.
I have never been as happy with Firefox as I am in 2025. Yet… Sometimes my fellow FF users seems to be making a worse advertisement than the ”you should rewrite this application in Rust” does for Rust, and those people have by sheer annoyance effectively made me never pick up Rust because I do not want to be associated with them.
The wobbling is the worst part of the hardware on my iPhone mini, annoys me probably more than fifty times per week.
Because I often unlock it when it is on the desk I also miss Touch ID a lot, because with Face ID I also have to lean forward every time for it to recognise me.
The commission might have agreed with the timeline. It is unclear. But on the other hand this is not just about the relationship between Apple and the EC. Their understanding might actually have meant that the damage to users and other developers remained as is claimed here so the commission now has to listen to the injured party and adjust their posture.
Think of it this way: I am blocking part of your driveway for some reasons, and after a while me and the city inspector agree that I will remedy the situation next year. Would you accept that, or would you tell the inspector that your driveway is still not useable and that I should be quicker?
In reality there are only two mobile operating systems where there is any hardware to purchase in my town. These two operating systems are the only mobile devices where my bank (and as far as I am aware other competing banks in my area) offer banking on.
There are many variables that goes into the purchase of a mobile phone, the App Store is only one of many. Google is marginally better at allowing side-loading or alternative stores, there is a degree of flexibility in hardware choices and so on. But on the other hand I trust Apple more (absolutely not fully, mind you) with regards to general privacy for example. This privacy protection in conjunction with significantly better movie recording compared to Android are the two primary reasons I stay on iOS.
But at the same time, I am highly critical of Apple’s conduct here. And because it is effectively impossible to vote with my wallet I am voting with my vote so that politicians enact policies that allow me to use my devices the way I want.
Not all banks, government services, travel and ticketing systems, and the list goes on.
The unfortunate reality is that we have a duopoly in the mobile device market and having one of those devices are now a practical necessity to live a normal life for most people. Without regulation to force the market to open up there's little to stop organisations that want ever more control over the devices you can use to access their systems. Trying to go outside the two big players just means you're going to get a substandard or completely pointless experience. And even governments are in on it.
Which is going to be interesting when both the huge US corporations that form that duopoly and/or the government of their home nation decide to do something that goes against what the government or laws in other places want to happen.
You're not wrong, but I'm trying to raise the issue with any service forcing me into the duopoly by showing them my Librem 5. Sometimes it's quite entertaining. This is another venue for making the change.
Now show what banks (and where) have apps targeting that phone
Not glorified webpages. Full on apps. Preferably by the banks themselves (sorry bedroom hobbyists, I don't quite trust you with my banking details yet!)
And this is the problem. We should insist on standard web pages for everything, and never allow closed source apps on our devices. Native apps are far less sandboxed and under certain conditions make it trivial to spy on the user by accessing contact lists, other apps installed and more.
AFAIK the only Android derivative that has patched the most obvious security issues of this kind is Graphene.
reply