Comment by ineedaj0b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ineedaj0b | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think you should reconsider your judgement on the EU ruling being good.

If you can’t argue the EU ruling is bad (and not because Apple is greedy or shortsighted etc), you are missing something.

Apple has a vision - the EU has a vision and they do not align.

The EU is poor. It has been mismanaging itself for years: they should be doing better than they are. Is this caused by outside vectors or the leadership, or maybe the structure (too many cooks in EU kitchen)?

Is the vision of the world the EU wants 15-25 years out strong?

Is the world the EU would create good for the EU - 30 years out? I’d argue it’d be a comfortable one. But a poor and weaker one.

I’m not trying to defend Apple. I’m trying to say that the EU leadership is likely bad - my hunch is anyone truly good would work in the state department of the respective nation.

Kinda like how UN ambassadors for the US are never our best - our best maybe might once in a blue moon take the post like a retirement phase.

Now take the ruling, are you sure they made a smart long term move?

I don't know what "ruling" you're talking about. The DMA is a law, and it will be enforced despite Apple pretending to comply with it. There's nothing like a judicial proceeding as yet, much less a ruling.

This really underscores the point, and it's not just Gruber and random internet commenters opining on EU law while having zero clue about it, it's also Apple fans I respect like John Siracusa and Jason Snell who have a lot of opinions without familiarizing themselves with the facts.

Gruber had Jason as his guest on the last episode of The Talk Show, just to give some context to both of their arguments.

At the very least, they seem to agree that issues with the DMA - and the US DOJ case - stem from the idea that these lawmakers fundamentally misunderstand Apple's approach and why customers choose iOS, macOS, etc.

Tl;dr, the integration is the point and these legal challenges pose the idea that this approach doesn't comport with the law as written and should be disallowed.

That sounds like critical understanding failure on what DMA is about, what law is about, what EU is and is about.

If, by that you mean:

1. The EU passed a law that was too complicated for its own good and... 2. Is a law that isn't practically enforceable 3. Lastly, is largely incompatible with how US public companies operate - welcome to Capitalism, it's how the world works...get used to it.

If market forces mean people either choose piracy to get what they want (Napster), that's one thing and regulation can help with that. However, the idea that you can't build a closed ecosystem that operates how you want - before you even get to shareholders in a public company - because this imposes restrictions on citizens, is a weird way to look at the world for a region that is - nominally - still capitalist.

> The EU is poor. It has been mismanaging itself for years: they should be doing better than they are. Is this caused by outside vectors or the leadership, or maybe the structure (too many cooks in EU kitchen)?

> Is the vision of the world the EU wants 15-25 years out strong?

> Is the world the EU would create good for the EU - 30 years out? I’d argue it’d be a comfortable one. But a poor and weaker one.

The EU vision isn't just about economy and making money. This is something that the US will never understand because money and unrestricted capitalism is the only thing that counts there. The US truly doesn't understand that any other model can work, because the only way they measure success is $$$.

Whereas we in Europe care more about quality of life, a safety net etc. Our bank accounts are a means to that end but not a goal in themselves.

Of course Europe is quite different depending on the area with Netherlands and the UK also very neoliberal but most of the other countries are way more moderate.

I often get this disconnect even with my Dutch friends. They don't understand why I won't move back to Holland as I could make twice as much there in the same role. But the cost of living is also higher and more importantly the quality of life is much lower. People in Spain truly enjoy life much more.

For example during lunch a Dutch person would have a quick sandwich at the canteen so they can head off home early and beat the traffic jam. They always want to have the prettiest house and the fanciest car and work hard for it. So hard they lose time to enjoy those things. In Spain we go for lunch to a restaurant to have a three course meal with a glass of wine and after work we often grab a beer or two and sit in the sun. Most of my colleagues don't even own a car.

Life feels way more real to me here.

I don't think "Spanish people get to be alcoholics" is enough proof that a system works where you need to have the same currency as a poorly run country like Greece or, at this point, Germany.

(Germans are psychotically high trust and seem to just believe anything anyone tells them, like "you should shut off all your nuke plants" or "Russians are really nice and it's fine to buy all your energy from them" or "you should sell your robotics companies to China" or "you should never ever run a budget deficit".)

It's not really about the drinks and many people don't have the wine or beer. I just included them as a way to describe the informal nature. At lunch we only ever have one (in France even the canteens serve wine, it's quite normal). And we don't do it every day :)

It's just about enjoying life being the primary goal, not amassment of material goods.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com