Yes in my view this is really obvious punishment and the EU should increase the pressure on Apple. Don't be afraid of US companies and their bully tactics, let's see who has the longer arm. For all I care we can remove Apple devices entirely in the EU. People who want an Apple device can import it "illegally" then.
> Don't be afraid of US companies and their bully tactics
You might disagree with Apple's move, but all the EU has is power. Apple provides value, from which it derives money. The EU is combatting it not with an environment that allows competitors to arise. It's combatting value with power.
Let me give you one example of some EU provided value:
"ASML is the only company in the world that makes a specific machine needed to make the most advanced chips. Apple couldn’t make iPhone chips without this one machine from the Netherlands’ biggest company. ASML doesn’t just shape the Dutch economy — it shapes the entire world economy."
Apple could cease to exist today and the world wouldn't lose much except some overpriced gadgets. Couldn't say the same for ASML. And that's just one example.
ASML is floated on a small EU stock exchange, and also NASDAQ. NASDAQ is what allows them to scale and become enormous and keep their position, other than IP laws on their techniques. I'm not saying the EU can't produce companies; I'm saying that, in this case, if it were good at it they wouldn't need to float in the US to scale.
Regardless, the point is that the EU has zero muscle when it comes to building out consumer-facing software. All it knows how to do is regulate.
The EU's answer to AI? To nuke its only successful AI startup, Mistral, with the AI Act [1]. They had to gerrymander an exception in for Mistral.
The EU pretends to care about consumer privacy and then introduces Article 45, completely destroying web security and privacy [2] more than Meta/Apple/etc ever could.
Fundamentally, the EU does not understand what it is doing. It is a broken clock that is right twice a day. All it has demonstrated is the ability to rent-seek and grift from international tech companies, while enacting protectionist laws that conveniently avoid its own (few) companies. Why isn't Spotify targeted by the DMA? Who knows!?
You can say "it doesn't matter, follow our laws!" Okay. But don't be surprised when your TLS communications are being MITM'd by the EU and when companies maliciously comply with these ridiculous laws. The EU can only push things so far, and miss out on so many "industrial revolutions", before it becomes an irrelevant/unprofitable market, impossible to build for.
This situation is like if the majority of the EU's transportation infrastructure (e.g. roads, train tracks, etc.) were owned by a handful of private American companies. Whatever value they provide (maybe it's really good infrastructure), their power comes from their overwhelming dominance and control of these sectors of the economy (i.e. transportation/tech). Don't act as though Apple is some powerless and altruistic party.
> Don't act as though Apple is some powerless and altruistic party.
If you have to straw man, what's the point? I'm not mentioning altruism. They provide value; they get money. The second they stop providing value, they have no money.
That's different to power. A bureacrat can write some words and suddenly phones can't be sold any more. That's power.
Fundamentally, I don't see a difference between Apple writing some words and suddenly, you have to pay a fee for distribution of iPhone apps on non-Apple app stores, and say, a government writing some words and suddenly, foreign imports have to pay extra taxes. Neither is generating value; they're both rent-seeking in those examples. They both have power because of what's "theirs".
Alternately, you could say neither has any power, and both provide value. The government provides value by funding public infrastructure, promoting economic development, protecting citizens from foreign invasion, and so on. If citizens don't like it, they can vote the government out (though it would be different if it were a dictatorship).
In my original comment, I was basically irritated by you implying Apple has no "power," and that they can only counter the government's power through "value," i.e., making people's lives better somehow. It's insinuating Apple derives no power from their business, and that Apple provides value for no reason (hence the use of the word "altruism").
> Alternately, you could say neither has any power, and both provide value. The government provides value by funding public infrastructure, promoting economic development, protecting citizens from foreign invasion, and so on. If citizens don't like it, they can vote the government out (though it would be different if it were a dictatorship).
This is the problem, though. If Apple starts doing a bad job, they will lose all their sales. So they have to constantly re-earn customers, and keep making it worthwhile for developers to build for their platform. Their product is a bit sticky, but not very.
The EU - well, the EU doesn't do some of the stuff you list, but even if it did, you can't vote it out. You might be able to vote for your local EU representative, but that's about it, and it's an incredibly weak signal.
More simply: Apple provides value, which people will chase. If value stops, Apple will fail. So it needs to keep providing value for people to keep opting in. The EU's regulatory influence ultimately derives from the threat of sanctions and imprisonment. That's power, because you can't opt out.
If the EU does a bad job, or is particularly bad for one country, those citizens can vote to leave the EU. Several parties in EU member countries advocate for this [0], but those parties aren't popular, and so far, only the UK has withdrawn.
If the EU stops being a good place to do business, then international corporations like Apple will stop doing business there, and/or dissatisfied members will withdraw from the EU. The economic growth of EU nations will decline, their citizens' quality of life will decline, and they'll lose influence in international politics. The same applies to individual national governments; it's just that national governments in the EU are betting on the EU's success, not its decline.
> More simply: Apple provides value, which people will chase. If value stops, Apple will fail. So it needs to keep providing value for people to keep opting in. The EU's regulatory influence ultimately derives from the threat of sanctions and imprisonment. That's power, because you can't opt out.
Apple can opt out by not doing business in the EU. The EU provides value by creating a unified economic zone between European member states.
You can't do business without enforcing copyright, property rights, and enforcing the law through a state monopoly on violence. All governments provide value for corporations by supporting them like this; corporations exist because the state, and the people represented by the state, want them to exist, because they're already an artificial construct that the state uses violence and imprisonment to support (and to be clear, I'm not against corporations existing; I'm not a communist). The fact that they have the ability to use their economic influence to prevent competition from arising is only there because they rely on state power to exist. State violence and Apple's degree of control over the market are inseparable.
So it makes complete sense for a state to regulate the actions of a corporation to benefit their people; international corporations do business in other countries because it's mutually beneficial for the corporation and the people of that country.
> If the EU does a bad job, or is particularly bad for one country, those citizens can vote to leave the EU.
This is an insanely weak and laggy signal. As soon as iPhones drop slightly in quality, some people will start switching, and more will follow. That is a much better signal. And that's why Apple need to constantly re-win their customers' business, and keep doing a good job. That is a precise and rapid signal.
> The EU provides value by creating a unified economic zone between European member states.
This isn't quite right. The EU also threatens value prevention by holding hostage all of the EU's citizens as potential customers. I would argue that's far more of a threat of value reduction than the small value add of having a unified economic zone. Apple sells just fine all over the world. The threat isn't "pay us fines or you'll have to deal with our member states individually". It's "pay us fines or you can't sell in the EU."
