If that was the entire point then the law should have been written to do that. Apple thinks they are complying with the law.

I think this is another classic case of people getting mad over what they think the law should be vs. what the law actually is.

Apple has a history of bad faith & malicious non-compliance, what they "think" is pretty much irrelevant at this point. We know what the spirit of the regulation is, and I trust that the EU regulators are interested in effecting those changes, otherwise what's the point of this entire ordeal if Apple only has to pay lip service to anti-trust intervention?

I am getting the same vibes from this as I did when Google was found guilty of abusing monopoly power. People lost their minds because “Apple is so much worse!” Never mind that the two lawsuits filed by Epic against Google and Apple were over different things and had different results because of it.

The DMA targeted different companies in different ways all under the rubric of combatting “gatekeeping.” They then went on to say how different companies were guilty of that crime in different ways. It would not surprise me at all if Apple has complied with what the EU singled Apple out for. It also wouldn’t surprise me if casual observers have conflated all the different flavors of gatekeeping that the DMA has directed at all companies.

Apple has probably calculated the risk of a legal challenge as 99%, the risk of losing it is 80%, but they expect a small/affordable penalty and at least a couple of years where they can hold onto their rent seeking in the iPhone space.

I don’t agree. Anyone can notarize non-malicious apps at any time on the Mac already. Please look at what you can do with Mac apps before judging.

I think the issue here is just the additional payment, not the notarization. That part is hopefully rejected as a non-solution to the issue.

I'm well aware of how the notarization process works on macOS. I considered supporting it for an open source project I was working on, but I abandoned the macOS version after I realized that I would have to pay Apple's annual $100 fee.

Notarization could theoretically be used for "good", even though I strongly dispute its effectiveness. It only ensures that someone's card is on file to potentially aid in investigation after the damage has been done. In the case of malware, that card is likely to be stolen anyway.

The more likely option is that Apple will start abusing notarization as a way to take down apps it finds objectionable in some way, even though they do exactly what they say on the tin.

I guess as usual this will come down to porn. if those apps get rejected despite being non-malicious that shows how this "notarization" process truly is.

To be honest, it's not even like I care that much about the additional payment. Scummy but expected. It's more that the current prices, similar to Unity, seem to pretty much punish any innovative idea that takes off, to a point where Apple will not just make the product unproftiable but bankrupt the developer in the process. Most mobile apps are free so people underestimate how quickly you can hit 1M. At least make it something like $0.05 at a million and ramp it up at 5m or 10m to these larger prices. by 10m downloads you are much more likely a larger business or have figured out a way to properly scale your app.

oh and don't count updates, discouraging devs from maintaining their apps. Devs don't profit from an existing user updating, why should Apple?