Does this apply to PlayStations, Xbox, Nintendos, etc?
They already are general purpose computing devices, the restrictions on how the general purpose software (apps) interact with the hardware in no-way negates that fact same with the restrictions on how you get the general purpose software (app-store). At the end of the day an iPhone is nothing more than a portable a computer, it's as simple as that.
Even if I'd personally like it, I don't think the same argument makes much sense for a PS5 - when have you last used it to order groceries or new furniture? Apple would love to get a cut of those purchases, by the way.
Starting by dealing with the devices that have the highest impact on the largest number of people, due to a runaway capitalistic empire trying to add an additional tax to everything that vaguely gets near it, has a higher chance of actually succeeding.
This is the worst approach, I think. Lawmaking shouldn't work where a juicy fineable target is spotted, singled out, and milked for all it's worth. Laws should set out rules that everyone has to follow.
Also, it might be hard to order groceries on a PS5, but it's much simpler to make a PS5 able to browse the Web than it is to open up an iPhone to any HTML-rendering code, or background tasks, without compromising the seamless experience reasons many people bought one for in the first place.
> due to a runaway capitalistic empire trying to add an additional tax to everything that vaguely gets near it
It's not due to a runaway capitalistic empire. It's because it made stuff people really want, so they'll pay for it. You're thinking of political structures, where people are forced to pay taxes regardless of the outcomes. Apple are rich because they make things people want. That's not a runaway empire. That's just being really, really useful. This gross mischaracterisation of useful structures as empires is astonishing and unhelpful to any clarity of thought.
Once the device has been sold to you (for a profit, even!), Apple has no business interfering in relationships between you and a separate business trying to sell you additional software for it, much less to collect a tax on entirely unrelated things like streaming video subscriptions.
If you really believe that "once a device has been sold to you, the manufacturer has no business interfering in relationships between you and a separate business trying to sell you additional software for it", then you'd want to apply that principle to gaming consoles, to car infotainment systems, etc.
But no, the EU legislation basically restricts their coverage to only the largest companies (which are incidentally not EU companies). It's not based on principles, but on opportunistically targeting the companies that can afford to pay and can't afford to lose the EU market.
If they want access to EU citizens, then they have to play by the EU's rules, otherwise they can get bent and say goodbye to that whole market.
You can, though. There's no particularly convenient way to do most of those things, but that's largely because of manufacturer limitations. Nothing stopping you from using the browser on your Switch to go do instacart.com, tho.
>Starting by dealing with the devices that have the highest impact on the largest number of people
Why would this need to be addressed so singularly? Is that how the EU approaches most problems? It seems pretty sensible that they'd just regulate computing devices to allow for this sort of thing and then be able to pretty easily bring into compliance any who don't. Isn't that more or less what they did with the GDPR? It seems like regulating this would be even easier as non-compliance would be entirely visible to the consumer.
I don't know, I didn't write the law. They must have thought this is the better approach to start with. Perhaps they consider fighting one gigacorp at a time to be easier. After all, Apple has been left to grow unchecked until became larger than many countries.
Sure wish the US would just handle Apple the same way China has handled Alibaba growing too large. One can dream, right?
For context, they basically just said "you had your fun, it's over" and forcibly split the company in many smaller ones under new leadership.
You can't just open up a browser on the switch (or a ps5 for that matter). You have to use a workaround to access the browser that's only intended for viewing help/regulatory pages and interacting with wifi captive-portals. I guess they're really mad about the browser exploits that hit them in previous gens. (although, doesn't matter if you still have any browser access)
It's on about the same level as escaping the UI on a touchscreen kiosk to access the web.
I'm not sure they meet the requirements of being a gatekeeper. One of the requirements for example is 45 million monthly active users in the EU. According to Microsoft, Xbox is only at 4 million:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/informat...
Playstation and Nintendo might be more popular, but 10x more popular? Even the Switch has only sold 6x the Xbox Series consoles.