Game Streaming Apps Now Allowed in iOS

Vestager also warned companies against discouraging users from switching to rivals by disparaging them, saying this kind of behaviour could trigger an investigation. Apple has said some of its changes could expose users to security risks.

“I would think of it as unwise to say that the services are not safe to use, because that has nothing to do with the DMA. The DMA is there to open the market for other service providers to get to you and how your service provider of your operating system, how they will make sure that it is safe is for them to decide,” she said.

Apple can’t point out that apps from other app stores are not checked by apple for security and safety, because saying that “has nothing to do with the DMA.”

Europe is a silly silly place. Have fun with your Russian malware, folks!
 
“I would think of it as unwise to say that the services are not safe to use, because that has nothing to do with the DMA. The DMA is there to open the market for other service providers to get to you and how your service provider of your operating system, how they will make sure that it is safe is for them to decide,” she said.
If this word salad represents the level of security concern within the EU then the DMA is going to be even worse than I had imagined. And I thought it was going to be bad already. The idea that you can trust every third-party store to protect their customers is ludicrous. As is the idea that the governments in the EU will be able to respond to every malware attack. Every ransomware group out there and the new ones that this will create have to be delighted by the possibilities.

Edit: And sandbox jailbreaks value on iOS has just skyrocketed.
 
It is because Apple forces it. Google does not force Chrome engines on Android
Well, they don't need to force it on Android, what alternatives are there? And what market share do those alternatives have on Android? Apple does not make a multiplatform Safari anyway.

Why can't Firefox use Gecko in iOS but can in macOS? Good thing in the EU they can't do that anymore.
No, it's not a good thing. Web browsers have been slowly converging into a single engine, Chromium. And the EU just kneecapped the second player and only widespread alternative. The marginal benefit of allowing what is now a largely irrelevant browser (Firefox has a 3% global market share now) to expand in a new platform (iOS) is not worth the cost of letting Chrome also expand into iOS. I'm not one to make predictions, but I believe in a decade we'll be remembering this decision grimly.

[...] Apple can just throw up their hands and say “not our fault”.

This gives them two obvious benefits. First it gives Apple the ability to say that the Apple App Store is safer. Please don’t download from outside our store for your own protection.
From experience, this doesn't work. People get angry when your product has issues no matter what caused those issues (not even when they cause the issue themselves!). Saying "it's not our fault" usually doesn't achieve anything. What ends up happening is that you need to invest a lot of time investigating the root cause of the issue (even if it's not within your product) to find workarounds in favor of your clients, who won't be grateful (not even close).

And they're not completely wrong: the customer doesn't need to know the intricacies of your product or the causality chain that leads to an issue. If your product is having issues due to some third party stuff, maybe you shouldn't depend on or even allow that stuff. Just cut the middleman whenever possible. Issue here, the EU is no longer allowing to do that. So this won't result in people believing that the App Store is safer, quite the opposite: people will start believing that Apple stuff is no longer safe. Who's at fault rarely matters.
 
From experience, this doesn't work. People get angry when your product has issues no matter what caused those issues (not even when they cause the issue themselves!). Saying "it's not our fault" usually doesn't achieve anything. What ends up happening is that you need to invest a lot of time investigating the root cause of the issue (even if it's not within your product) to find workarounds in favor of your clients, who won't be grateful (not even close).

And they're not completely wrong: the customer doesn't need to know the intricacies of your product or the causality chain that leads to an issue. If your product is having issues due to some third party stuff, maybe you shouldn't depend on or even allow that stuff. Just cut the middleman whenever possible. Issue here, the EU is no longer allowing to do that. So this won't result in people believing that the App Store is safer, quite the opposite: people will start believing that Apple stuff is no longer safe. Who's at fault rarely matters.
Sure. That's why Apple initially went with a model that allows them to make actual security and privacy protections. But just like when jailbreaking iPhones allowed malware and it got reported, Apple responded by saying we don't support jailbreaking and anything that happens is on the user. I suspect this will be the same. When the inevitable happens, there will be a flurry of press reports and Apple will respond, we don't support those App stores and users are safer just using ours.

As for the clients, I doubt they will get much sympathy or help from Apple besides being reminded that they again should use the Apple App Store. Given that these problems will only happen in the EU (at least currently) I think generally people will understand where the issue arrises. Just as the reports on the jailbreak malware happened mostly in China and Apple didn't take much heat after the initial reports.
 
I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the exceptions you raised to the proof your initial statement was incorrect.

You seem to be willing to grant everyone else a pardon to do the things Apple is accused of.
Out of curiosity, how would the DMA work on a device that only takes physical media?

I wonder if DMA had to apply to consoles if console makers would just drop digital media support.
 
Out of curiosity, how would the DMA work on a device that only takes physical media?

I wonder if DMA had to apply to consoles if console makers would just drop digital media support.
Truthfully I’m not sure but one aspect of the physical media era was that it was identical in all the ways supposedly important to the new regulations: no matter where you bought the game from, the console maker always got a significant percentage of the money and had ultimate control over who had access to the console market. Sure there was the veneer of having bought the game from a different store, but you were still really always buying from the console maker. It’s why originally console games even cost more than PC games until it was realized that console gaming had sufficiently anchored the price of buying games in general and PC gaming “caught up”.
 
Truthfully I’m not sure but one aspect of the physical media era was that it was identical in all the ways supposedly important to the new regulations: no matter where you bought the game from, the console maker always got a significant percentage of the money and had ultimate control over who had access to the console market. Sure there was the veneer of having bought the game from a different store, but you were still really always buying from the console maker. It’s why originally console games even cost more than PC games until it was realized that console gaming had sufficiently anchored the price and PC gaming “caught up”.

Not to mention Egghead or CompUSA or whatever taking their 70%.
 
Not to mention Egghead or CompUSA or whatever taking their 70%.
I wondered about that. Did Activision pay CompUSA/Egghead to carry World of Warcraft, or did CompUSA/Egghead buy the game at a wholesale rate then sell it at MSRP and pocket the difference?
 
I wondered about that. Did Activision pay CompUSA/Egghead to carry World of Warcraft, or did CompUSA/Egghead buy the game at a wholesale rate then sell it at MSRP and pocket the difference?
I *believe* they were bought at wholesale and it wasn’t a “auction of shelfspace”-type deal, which explained some of the dynamics (bargain bins, difficulty for new publishers with no track record getting into the stores, etc.). I remember reading an article that explained it all, but I can’t find it now.
 
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