I think the EU is getting all serious about trying to regulate Apple because they're jealous.
Yeah, trying to regulate the regulator. They're basically doing, they basically want the same things.
They're regular haters. Regular haters.
Regular haters. Regular haters. Apple is trying to like, control its user base, make all these rules about how they're like,
users, they're constituents if you will, or you know, can behave.
A lot to live, a lot to act, a lot to interact with one another.
And you got the EU. Trying to do the same thing.
The same thing except the users are citizens. Its hypocrisy is what it is.
Yeah. Why can't they be like other governmental jurisdictions and just not make any laws at all?
Complete laissez faire, just letting people drive on the sidewalks, download whatever they want,
side loading they call it, sin I say. It's basically like running people down on the sidewalk if you, side loading an app.
So think about that. This was not condoned by God.
Mr. I, we're here to talk about Apple and the EU and some of the most recent developments
last week because this is coming out on Monday, February 19th.
Last week Apple was let off the hook in regards to iMessage when it comes to
slapping the rest of the EU, regulating them.
Well, yeah, sort of. Because like, so the EU is Digital Markets Act.
Trying to kind of rein in all these tech giants who are operating willy nilly doing whatever the heck they want,
closing down their ecosystems, behaving in a way that I don't antitrust.
That was half baked. And the iMessage was going to be, they were investigating.
The EU was investigating whether iMessage should be one of these core platform providers
and thus subject to more regulations.
Especially because it technically meets the legal definition.
It's, what is it I wrote down.
The legal definition is it has at least 45 million EU users every month
and it's controlled by a firm with at least 75 billion euros in market capitalization.
And iMessage fits those definitions.
But Apple specifically was arguing that it should be excluded for various reasons.
Right. Which, you know, and we heard, oh sorry, and I'll say that the development here is that,
so even though it fits that definition, the EU decided.
Has made an explicit carve out. Right. For not only iMessage, but they also made the same thing for.
Bing, edge browser, and Microsoft's ad services.
Right. And so we know, you know, we published our TechLinked about this last week
and we got a lot of comments from you guys talking about,
especially specifically the ones of you that are in the EU.
And you were like, we don't use iMessage. This is not a big deal.
We're totally down with this because we all use WhatsApp instead.
The other platform offered by a tech giant with like near complete control over social media.
Which is itself actually considered a gatekeeper by the EU.
Right. WhatsApp has been designated under the DMA.
As it should. As it should.
Yeah. So the EU kind of has backed off and at least that aspect of it.
And, you know, the EU people, people who live in Europe might be like,
okay, it totally makes sense. Over here in North America, you know.
Bit of a culture clash. Definitely. Because over here, a lot of people use iMessage.
My entire family. Yeah. I think that Android phones altogether still have more market share.
But Apple is like, it's like Samsung and then Apple.
Yeah. It's up there. I looked it up recently. I forgot what it was.
A ton of people use iPhones and iMessage over here and it was interesting.
It's always interesting reading people who live in the EU posting online about how they're like,
we don't understand why North Americans are so worked up over this whole green bubble thing.
Like it's just a bubble. Why does it matter?
And I would agree with that to an extent. I do think we tend to get over obsessed with the green bubble.
Because iMessage is interoperable to an extent.
Yeah, it just sucks. You can message them. It's just you feel like a second-class citizen the entire time.
Yeah. And I'm sure to some people they do.
You know, I'm somebody who my friends and family, nearly all of them use iPhone.
Oh, I am the black sheep of the family group yet. 100%.
Yeah. Actually, two of my brothers are...
I have four brothers. Two of them are Android users.
That's important context. I'm gonna say two of my brothers immediately.
Is there like 12 Riley Murdochs wandering the countryside?
They are. It's a menace. Please be careful out there.
Just mustaches, rustling and bushes? They will laugh awkwardly all the time, just for no reason.
Two of them are Android users and basically every other person in my friends and family circle
are iPhone users. So it is really annoying when I get a...
I'll get messages because it sucks for both parties.
I'll get messages with a photo or video from my parents and they're like,
look at this and they were babysitting my kid the other day and they sent me a video.
And I'm just like... Compressed, blurry. You're just like, I don't remember him being that pixelated when I dropped him off.
It looks like he's either having fun or being disemboweled by a stuffed animal.
I don't know what's going on. You seem excited. I'll judge from context that he's not dead.
Yes, exactly. No, it's designed to annoy both sides of the interaction.
It is designed to annoy the Android users and we're the one who tend to fixate on it,
but it's also intended to annoy iPhone users.
Right, into not doing anything.
Well, that's what I'm confused about.
You want your own users annoyed with...
But I think they're depending on iPhone users on mass,
not really understanding the root cause of the issue.
They don't understand that Apple could fix it. They think the problem is that, oh, I'm texting this broke Android user.
With their inferior device. Yeah, why don't they just buy an iPhone?
And it's like, no, Tim Apple specifically in his giant tower of evil,
he has been plotting to make it so that your grandkids' photos look like absolute messes.
Look upon your photo library and despair.
Oh my gosh. May I just say that I found recently that some people have actually made compilations of me
doing the Tim Cook impression and it made me so happy.
I think there's two big ones that are out there.
Maybe a third one. I don't want to make anyone angry. If you made those, I sincerely thank you.
They are fun. They bring me joy.
But yeah, this iMessage thing, it's gotten North Americans confused
and there was another thing that kind of came out last week
about Apple and the EU and the regulations and whatnot,
which was the Apple's attitude towards progressive web apps.
Can you summarize exactly? This is not something that is in the official build yet.
This is in beta build. And in the past three, so like with the first two, they're like,
oh, this might be a mistake. This might be a glitch.
Right. Now that it's been like three separate builds, Apple has not fixed this.
This was previously functional. They're like, okay, this is probably intentional.
This is probably Apple doing something intentionally,
especially because it's happening at the same time as all of these other changes.
Right. And it's that they are making progressive web apps
non-functional in this build.
So they're just they're breaking them. They're breaking them.
They're breaking them. They're making them no longer act as apps
that you can open from the home screen. You know, boop, there you go.
And they're making them into essentially they function now
as shortcuts that just open a web browser. They just open the web page.
Which, to be fair, is essentially what progressive web apps are.
Right? Yes. They are shortcuts.
They're shortcuts, but they kind of also like some processing
is done on the device and some is done. It's the illicit love child of an app and a web page.
Right. They have features of both.
They do allow you to have like local storage,
which is no longer operable on iOS.
They do allow notifications, which is no longer operable on iOS.
Yeah. And the big thing is about progressive web apps.
Like I don't actually see like a huge user backlash to this.
Yeah. Well, and this is mostly something that the brands themselves
really like. Yeah.
I have, in the years that I've been covering tech news,
I've encountered the idea of progressive web apps, obviously, and I've like seen them, you know.
Yeah, because they support caring for the homeless and they want healthcare.
Progressive web apps. And also they're really convenient.
They open straight from the home page.
They're web apps that push for change.
No. Yeah.
There's sort of changes to the app design
that allows it to kind of like, you know, launch more responsively and, you know,
be a bit easier to use in the way that an app is,
like an actually installed app. But it's basically a website still.
Yes. Because it is, yeah, you're going through a browser.
And in my... It's an Uber web page that operates like the Uber app.
Yeah. Looking these up a little bit just a few minutes ago,
because I asked myself, I'm like, why do these exist?
Who wanted these? Does this really make life better for users
or for like business owners? And it seems like the people who really wanted these
were business owners. I don't want to speak for anyone if you're,
you know, on the user side of this and you're like, I love progressive web apps.
Every time I, you know, go on my browser
and look up a website. We don't mean to invalidate your lived experience.
Yeah. I'd go on a website and it tells me,
maybe you want to switch to the web app or whatever,
and you do that and you're very happy, then fair enough.
But for me, every time that it gave me that prompt on my phone, I'm like, no, just go to the,
just go to the website, please.
Stop. Yeah. And so...
We are old men, so... Yeah, yeah.
We don't like this new fangled business. As far as I can tell, the reason web apps really became a thing
is because they allow businesses
to kind of farm more interaction and engagement
from users when they go to a website. So apparently...
They decreased the friction of getting the consumer
on the app, engaging with the material,
buying the goods. Yeah.
So apparently Pinterest, a 2018 review published by Forbes,
this is just on Wikipedia, found that users of Pinterest's progressive web app
spent 40% more time on the site compared to the previous mobile website.
Revenue increased by 44%, core engagements by 60%.
So I'm like, okay, I understand. You know, because a progressive web app
is a bit easier to use than, like, a lot of mobile sites.
It's a slicker experience. It has less friction, less of those petty annoyances
that make you go, I should really go make something to eat.
I should really go clean the house.
Right. It's easier to just suck you in.
I guess the benefit, though, for users
is that you can have an app... They spend less time with their kids.
And more time sucked into a security. You know, and anything that can get you away.
Just that little bit of a dopamine hit to take away the nigh
unstopping pain of existence. And Apple doesn't want that
because they want your families to remain intact.
Absolutely. And buy more Apple products.
This is a Tim Cook conspiracy
to maintain the traditional family. I'm not going to do another impression.
The... The... The bait didn't work.
We get so excited on the writing team. Every time...
Every time Tim Cook makes an announcement.
I'm like, yes, yes, he's back. Yes.
But the benefit for the users is the fact that you can have, like,
an app-like experience outside of the distribution channel
that is the Apple App Store
or Google Play. So businesses can deliver this sort of
experience to users without going through all... Jumping through all those hoops.
Without necessarily having to use those stores as an intermediary.
Right. And that's why Apple wasn't really a fan of it
to begin with. Apple was never a fan of it. Right.
They caved a bit to pressure. Yeah.
And it looks like they're uncaving. It looks like they're digging out that cave.
Oh, wait. Really? I thought they...
I mean this. Well, they're killing them, right? Yes.
But they didn't want to put them in the first place. Oh, they caved to the pressure to allow... Yeah.
Right, right, right. Another uncaving. Yeah, I get what you're saying.
The cave, you know, I don't do well with cave analogies. They're decaving.
Right. And like, caving is not...
It's something that is not excavating a cave. It just means going inside a cave.
Yes. Splunking. There's that.
Wait, what is caving?
I'm honestly... Well, I mean,
I don't know if there's multiple definitions of the word cave.
I know that like... Caving also known as spelunking.
Yep. And potholing. So...
I have never heard of that before. That's... They're just making them up at this point.
That sounds dirty. Now, does this have anything to do with the EU thing, really?
Because Apple was forced to open up iOS
to third-party app stores.
Sort of, we'll get into that.
Because they were forced to do that, now they're like, well, I guess we don't need progressive web apps,
which was the previous method to kind of like skirt the app store.
Now you're gonna have your very own third-party app store,
instead of the Apple app store on your iPhones.
So you don't need progressive web apps anymore, so they're only killing these...
Are you happy now, developers? Stop crying!
So they're only killing it in the European Union.
Yes, it's exclusive to the EU. And that's another hint, is like,
okay, you're doing this intentionally, it's exclusively in the EU.
Is this a response to the other things going on in the EU?
Because, you know, Apple does do these things to keep regulators happy.
And if it's making a concession another area,
maybe we don't have to make this concession anymore. And of course, as their official explanation,
Apple has to claim that malicious web apps
could read data from other web apps and gain access to a user's camera,
microphone, and location without user consent. And like, think of the user!
When they said similar things like this... For shame!
The user! They said similar. They did scary language like this as well
when they released their, like, new rules for the app store in the EU.
But, like, those things are true...
Yes, they are. ...of any platform, if malware gets it.
So it's like, the... You know, maybe we should talk about this
when we, like, as we talk about the other regulations,
but just quickly,
anytime Apple talks about security as a reason for why they need to lock things down,
it always reads so hollow, because every other platform allows these things
and is able to have reasonable security,
like, reasonable protection. But Apple is the only
massive company, like, overseeing one of these massive platforms used by so many people
who insists that they have to have things locked down
so tight. Mother knows best. It's very paternalistic.
It is. And it's one of those competing values
kind of things where it's like, well, you want these services to be safe, right?
And I do. True. I do.
I very much do. But it's...
The question is not, should this be safe,
is are you balancing this correctly with other concerns?
And largely,
it is almost always the case that Apple is pushing
always like 10% too far. Yeah.
It's 10% too far. And it's interesting because
even when they do kind of open up,
they open up in the most limited way possible,
which... Like a reluctant child who's been told to apologize,
dragging their feet and saying, I'm sorry, I...
Well, but it's even, it's worse than that, because they're not acting petulant or like...
No. Like a kid so much as they... They're acting put upon.
They're acting like a dictator
that was just forced to respect human rights.
Like, they're like, okay, I guess we will allow people...
But just so you know, this is letting the communists win.
Yeah. But just so you know, if we let people out of their cells,
they could punch each other. So on the street.
So everyone needs to stay. That's why we need a curfew.
So that brings me to the App Store rules
that Apple instituted
because they were forced to because there was a deadline...
Or the deadline is coming up. We haven't hit the deadline yet,
but they know that they have to get these rules out and then there's a review process
and like the EU has to approve them and all that stuff and that.
I don't think anything has really moved forward on that. But if I'm not mistaking the deadline is...
It's coming up. March 6th, I believe.
So yeah, Apple is now allowing
third-party app marketplaces,
what they call... Well, they do have the bit of the Kleenex problem
where their word for an App Store
became the default word for an App Store.
Yeah. And I guess they were really like the first big one.
Yeah. They called them Apps. The Play Store is also an App Store.
Not only... So they're saying we're allowing you
to have these third-party App Stores. However,
every app that goes on the
App Marketplace, that is not ours,
we still have to scan it. We still have to make sure that it's cool.
Which is, you know,
somewhat fair on macOS
and on Windows. You can install any app you want
and the system security will scan the app when it's installed
or it'll check it against a list of currently known, you know,
malicious apps or whatever and it'll give you a warning
or whatever. But Apple's saying that
in order for you to publish an app on this other App Store at all,
they need to notarize it. For you to even consider downloading it,
it must pass through a test.
Which is just... And this is... Yeah, it's just so Apple.
If you want to launch an alternate App Marketplace,
you need to have a letter of credit from an A-rated financial institution
and at least a million euros in the bank.
Which I heard some developers say is actually kind of reasonable.
It does mean that they have a backstop in case something terrible happens.
Yeah. Which you do want for a company
that's dealing with very large amounts of refunds, potentially.
Right. But what they're definitely not allowing
is... So, like, there's some progress here. They're definitely not allowing
sideloading. No. People keep saying that.
I've seen articles published in the last week that are saying that Apple is allowing
sideloading. Really? And as far as I can tell, they are not.
I heard... I saw a bunch of initial articles talking about it,
but it's so annoying because you have some people who, I think,
view sideloading as just... Anything that isn't the App Store?
Yeah. Which is like... Well...
Words have meanings. Yeah. Sideloading should mean
going to a website or something or downloading a file, an APK file,
or... Or a package file on...
I don't know what it is on iOS, but... And then double-clicking that file to install it.
And... You're not getting it through an App Store at all.
To me, that's sideloading. But, you know, fair enough,
Apple people, you know, they're in their own world sometimes.
It's like you're calling her your side chick and she's just your wife? What's going on?
I will say... I will say that
every time I talk about Apple, I get self-conscious about whether, like,
Apple people listening to this, people who are Apple fans listening to this
think that I, like, absolutely just hate Apple. And I don't...
I don't at all. I think that they... Every day he walks into the office
and he just punches a picture of Tim Cook. It's just got him on a dartboard.
He doesn't even throw the darts. He just... I will defeat you and take your place.
That's what he's been practicing for. Yeah.
Barbara, come on. Tim Cook's skin suit.
No, I love Apple. I used to be an Apple user
before I got hired at NCIX and, like, just fully got brainwashed
into PC ecosystem. My wife uses Apple.
Everyone, like, a lot of people I know, use Apple and I'm like,
it's good for you. It's good for a certain type of people. They are very high-quality products.
The UI is simple. The design is slick.
And they're easy to use. And they're secure, you know?
They are. For better or worse, the measures that Apple takes
does help these people, these poor people,
who don't know how to use a phone unless Apple tells them how to.
See, I did it again. It's compulsive.
I can't be fully positive. So you got some notes here.
Commissions paid to Apple have been reduced to 10% for most devs
and for subscriptions after the first year.
And then there's a 17% commission
for digital goods and services. And that is if developers choose
to adopt the new business terms. Yes.
They stay on the old business terms
where it's like 30% or 15% depending on what your position is
in the developer marketplace, how popular you are, et cetera, et cetera,
how much revenue you're getting. Et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.
But here's the kicker.
Just from that, it sounds like... Sounds awesome.
It sounds like you should move. But they also introduced...
Oh, so add on to that potential 17%,
3% fee if you still want to use Apple's payment processing.
If you want to use an alternative payment processing, you can drop that 3% fee.
But Apple also introduced an additional core technology fee
of half a euro for each annual install per user
after the app crosses one million installs threshold.
And I am almost positive that they make this
so hard to understand on purpose. Yeah.
If math was your least favorite subject
in school, this is meant to trick you.
Yeah, for sure. Because it doesn't sound like a lot,
but it's super complicated to understand,
to really grok what's going on here.
Yeah. And it took me a while to wrap my head around it.
So essentially, the first time a user goes to install an app
on their device, if they've never installed this app before,
when they install it, the developer will pay half a euro.
Then, that user can install that app
anywhere they want on other devices, and the developer won't be charged
for 12 months. 12 months after the day
that the user installs the app for the first time,
then if they uninstall it and reinstall it
or install it on another device, then the developer will be pinged again.
Yeah, dinged. Not pinged. They won't get a little message
reminding them to reply to an email or something.
Yeah, so. And that happens for every user
after the app has been installed one million times.
So if you've got two million, that's half a million euros in fees.
Yes. And they have a handy calculator
so developers can go and see how much they might lose.
To see how absolutely ruined they're going to be.
Yeah, and most developers, it seems if you have an app
that's popular in any way. To any degree.
But particularly, if you do not have in-app purchases.
Like if you, because I was thinking about my favorite
game back in the day, which was Plants vs. Zombies,
the first one before they ruined it. And in that game,
I only paid for that game once. But I like to redownload it
every few years to play it again.
I would be financially...
Well, the developer would. The developer? No, like I would be punishing them.
Yes, yes. They would be getting punished
for my love. Yeah. Yeah.
My affection and my nostalgia for this game
and the fact that they're not pushy with in-app purchases
that you don't, it's not a live service game
that's constantly trying to suck the life out of you. That would actually be penalized
by this kind of game, this kind of payment structure.
And Apple has said that they are like, oh, we're going to protect against
people... Maliciously doing this. Yeah, people taking advantage of the system
if they want to like cancel developers. But you can also just
unmaliciously be severely punished by this. Yeah.
And that's actually far more likely. I think it was such whiplash,
oh, and one more thing, that core technology fee of half a euro,
it applies to alternate-app
marketplaces for every install. They don't need to wait...
They are not protected by the one million install threshold.
Yeah, so you don't have to wait for an app marketplace to be installed a million times.
Now, all of these numbers,
does it only have to be installed one million times in the EU?
Presumably. I feel like that's true. Presumably.
Yeah, it must be. It'd be weird if it wasn't. It'd be weird if like,
you had like a million installs in like,
I don't know, Tajikistan. Yeah.
And you had one install over that limit in the EU,
and suddenly you owed Apple like a dollar.
Yeah. So there's like, there's sort of...
That's not intuitive. There's sort of a...
You can see Apple's side here a little bit, because as we've said,
EU people say again and again how not popular iPhones are
and iMessages in Europe. Although iPhone is more popular than iMessage.
That's true. A lot of people will still have iPhones. Download WhatsApp on it.
Yeah, for sure. WhatsApp gets dinged.
But yeah, this came out and the news came out
and it seemed like, oh my gosh, the EU got Apple.
You know, they... We've been forcing...
They basically forced them to put USB-C in the iPhone.
Yes. Apple finally caved to that,
I think before they really had to, but like, they made it clear,
I think at some point, I remember a press release.
They knew it was inevitable. About how they were like, it was worse,
but we're doing it anyway, I guess. For you.
Even though the connector's better than lightning, whatever.
I don't know if it's... If it's like a factual thing,
I always felt that the lightning connectors wore out faster.
The actual connector that's themselves are pretty robust.
But like the... I found the cables fraying.
The cables fray like anything else. Like nothing else.
Yeah. Or maybe that's because I was jumping a rope with them.
That'll do it. Apple...
I got whiplash when we reported on this.
It was like, wow, you got Apple.
And then the more you read into it, the more like, oh, this is why
people called it malicious compliance. However, one other thing that came out
at the same time was Apple announced that globally, gaming apps,
cloud gaming apps can now list all of their library and have their
library of games accessible from within the iOS app on the App Store,
which was not allowed before. Yeah, they'll list them all individually.
Well, that's what Apple wanted them to do. Like Xbox and...
Resident Evil 1, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Code Veronica.
Xbox basically said, yeah, no, we're not doing that.
And then they just had the web app basically. You could go to gforcinalo.com
or Xbox, Game Pass or whatever, and you could use the browser to stream games,
but it's not a great solution. So at least that's the one thing
that they unequivocally gave ground on.
But the rest of it, it remains to be seen
how the whole Apple versus the EU situation
will continue to play out here. Where do you see things going from here?
Do you see the EU calling Apple out on this
and being like, no, this is not good enough, or are they gonna do a similar thing
that they did with iMessage, because they know that iMessage qualifies,
but it's only their jurisdiction in Europe.
It makes kind of sense. It has a lot to do with just how we're defining
what a market is. If we're only defining it as the EU
and we're only defining it as... A lot of antitrust is like that,
and it can be quite frustrating, because it feels like, principally,
you should be doing it this way, but no, it is done by rule.
It is done by these esoteric, very specific principles that are...
We have been using legally as jurisprudence
for hundreds of years, and they don't really make a lot of sense
unless you're very immersed in them. Yeah, I mean...
But I do think that Apple's going to get
significantly more pushback for what they've been doing with the App Store
than they will for... I do not think it's going to go...
Maybe they're not going... Maybe regulators are not going to
push them that hard, but I cannot imagine they'll just give them
a complete carve-out and accept these new rules. Yeah, they're just...
They're ridiculous, because... They seem actively worse
than the rules they were forced to change. Developers basically have a choice between
sticking with Apple's old rules, which are the proper right rules
that you should follow, or switching to this new system
because they really, really, really want to launch a third-party...
Their apps on their third-party App Store, or like Epic, they want to launch their own
third-party App Store. But by doing that,
they're getting so much worse of a deal. A hefty financial penalty.
And basically the only people... Epic has said,
we're going to launch Fortnite on iOS through the Epic Game Store
when we launch that as a new App Marketplace later this year.
But... Like the Epic Game Store,
which is to be an exercise in losing money because they're going to be...
They're still going to be paying Apple crazy amounts of fees if they do this.
Through the notes. I half expect them to just say,
like, you know what, we're still not going to do it, because I feel like they wanted to take this win
quote-unquote... They wanted to revel a little bit
in Apple being forced to allow third-party App Stores
by saying, haha! We are going to launch our App Store
at all before. Now they can do it. But it's going to be like...
At what cost? At a big one.
But the thing is, we're not the only ones who are aware of this.
Regulators are likely to be aware that offering someone
a choice that technically exists but is effectively the
exact same choice as before. It's just like, well, like previously
I said you could go by my rules and now you have the option of going by my rules
by stepping into this bear trap. Yeah.
I cannot imagine that will fly. Yeah.
And then there's the whole question of whether the EU should be attempting
to regulate these companies in this way. Because
as far as... So far
it seems like the EU has kind of put through regulations
that, at least to us in the tech sphere, we don't...
We aren't really involved in keeping up with European
regulations in non-tech... Speak for yourself.
Sure. Potholes.
And we can't talk about it now even if we are caught up with it.
But with other areas of politics we're not going to delve into like,
oh, the EU is regulating healthcare or all these things, right?
Should there be a tariff on Brussels brown? Yeah, exactly.
As far as that, we like what the EU has done so far
broadly. But the question becomes
when do they stop? At what point will the EU say,
all right, that's enough regulation now. The market is
sufficiently de-freedomized a little bit
so that it's a bit more fair. But I
hope that they stop at the right point instead of just
regulations on companies such that because
sometimes you can foster innovation other times you can stifle innovation
with regulations, so I don't know. I don't live in Europe.
We live in Canada. Which is essentially the Europe of North America.
I think you offended a lot of Europeans there.
And I'm glad. Primarily because it's a country and not...
Okay, well let me say goodbye to the Europeans in their own language.
Thank you for watching, guys. Um...
Don't forget to subscribe to TechLanged.
See you. That might be too offensive
to include in the video. But I'm not going to do an alternative
so we're forced to use it.