Those rumors are not really providing new information.
The EU law has passed. It's pretty clear that it requires Apple to do the things those reports say Apple is "considering" (allow truly alternative browsers, allow other app stores etc.).
The law is taking effect soon. Apple has little choice but to comply.
It would be news if Apple was considering not complying with EU law. Which would likely be suicidal but it's not like Apple wasn't jerking around South Korea and some european country with fake compliance.
What I would like to know: will Apple give US a big middle finger by only implementing this in EU or globally.
Again, I think excluding US from those changes would lead to blowback but Apple was so arrogant about those things in the past that I wouldn't consider that impossible.
It feels like Apple has actually been moving in this direction for a while now, it's just that you don't see it because all of the visible movement has been happening on the macOS side.
The security model in macOS has changed dramatically since 2019 with Catalina—so much so that the OS is basically unrecognizable to me from an admin level.
It is likely that iOS is going to get the same Full Security, Reduced Security, and Permissive Security options as macOS. It seems like the only thing that Apple hasn't decided on yet is whether or not they will continue to allow signed, non-App Store apps under the default Full Security policy. I suspect they will not or that this is where iOS and macOS will diverge in terms of security policy, or that possibly one other category is created under Full Security that allows this. I would not be that surprised if the next version of macOS requires you to boot into the startup utility to set "App store and identified developers" as an option and further restricts what signed applications are allowed to do.
Apple is going to go the extra mile and allow companies like Epic and Spotify to do whatever they want. But they don't have to sign their apps and let them do it under the default security policy. They can simply say, "You can ask your customers to switch their security policy to Reduced Security if they want to install unsigned apps." And then customers can decide if they'd rather play Fornite or use ApplePay.
The EU law has passed. It's pretty clear that it requires Apple to do the things those reports say Apple is "considering" (allow truly alternative browsers, allow other app stores etc.).
The law is taking effect soon. Apple has little choice but to comply.
It would be news if Apple was considering not complying with EU law. Which would likely be suicidal but it's not like Apple wasn't jerking around South Korea and some european country with fake compliance.
What I would like to know: will Apple give US a big middle finger by only implementing this in EU or globally.
Again, I think excluding US from those changes would lead to blowback but Apple was so arrogant about those things in the past that I wouldn't consider that impossible.