Apple Intelligence won't be available in Europe, Tim's terrified of watchdogs | Hacker News Reader

Apple Intelligence won't be available in Europe, Tim's terrified of watchdogs

theregister.com

35 pointsbeardyw39 comments

> The affected services are said to include Phone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing, and Apple Intelligence

Let me me start by saying that Apple largely made its own bed here and has little room to complain about the rules not being clear (re: DMA) when they pull the same shit with their App Store:

Dev: Can I release an App that does X?

Apple: Build it, submit it, and then we will decide

But the EU has also made their bed and this is a direct result of the DMA and not 100% punitive IMHO.

I’m sure it’s slightly punitive but I also can see where Apple is coming from. They must be wary about releasing new features deeply baked into the OS that the EU might use the DMA to try to force them to open them up. I’m guessing they want to play a “wait and see” game for how far they get pushed on the existing features that are up in the air (DMA-compliance-wise) because they throw more feature out there.

New legislation for rapidly moving new technology is not 100% clear at the outset.

Shocking!

The idea that if legislation is not perfectly crafted it’s bad is ridiculous. The only reason anyone even entertains this patently stupid concept is because the dysfunctional American system means you have to spend massive political capital to get legislation passed and once you did there’s almost no way to tinker the legislation to correct mistakes and handle unforeseen impacts.

Fortunately most of the rest of the world, especially the EU, don’t act that way. Yeah the initial legislation will have flaws. And they will fix them.

All that being said, considering Apple has consistently acted in bad faith with EU legislation I would wait until other non bad faith actors (so not Meta) also face similar issues.

> The idea that if legislation is not perfectly crafted it’s bad is ridiculous.

I literally never said that. I said it was unclear and a “wait and see” strategy is completely valid given the uncertainty.

Not only do I not believe that the EU is somehow better at changing and adapting laws but I wasn’t making any of the arguments you seem to be replying to. Also I’d love to hear who you think are “non bad faith actors” w.r.t. the DMA.

I don't think he said the legislation was bad. It's accomplishing exactly what it set out to do.

It's also worth noting that anytime anyone is offering AI inference "for free", they're doing so at a loss, because AI inference is not free. If they were forced to open it up for arbitrary programmatic usage, that would indeed be a huge problem.

Though in an ideal world the DMA would work out so that you could just choose your AI provider. Though I guess (inevitably) having big tiddy unabomber chan as the face of your product may not be the look they're striving for.

> They must be wary about releasing new features deeply baked into the OS that the EU might use the DMA to try to force them to open them up.

Why is that a bad thing? Why can't I, as a developer who has a good idea about using these APIs in a novel way, just do that? Why do users need to patiently wait for Apple to maybe perhaps give a damn about my idea before they can have that need served?

If you want to build AI features into your app, using technology you develop, that's up to you and you can do that on the iPhone today. OpenAI has an app in the App Store right now, and it's available in the EU.

But I can't use the features available in the OS, for some reason. What's next, not being able to use the windowing system, or the networking stack? After all, I can write my own in userland, if I want, the Wireguard developers did!

> But I can't use the features available in the OS, for some reason

Well, the reason is that they’re still figuring out what those features are and how they should work, and how to keep them reliable and secure. You’ll get your turn, eventually.

I won't "get my turn", I'll get to use them and nobody else will, because only EU developers will be able to use these forced-open APIs.

Well, no, EU developers won’t be able to use them at all, since it’s not launching in the EU.

And non-EU developers won't be able to use these APIs at all either, since they're exclusive to Apple.

Eventually they’ll get finalized and standardized, and then others will be able to use them.

The neural engine hardware is available to developers via API, even in Europe.

Well, you could argue that they’re developing a new technology and get to have some exclusive rights for a couple of years. Like patents.

What's the exclusive technology? An API that lets you take screenshots? Why can't they open that up, and implement the rest as an app, same as everyone else?

I really don't understand the Stockholm syndrome prevalent here. Every time the DMA comes up, it's all "Apple is right to not let us use their APIs", as if you guys are all Tim Cook, instead of iOS developers or users.

Malicious compliance. the MDA is entirely clear here, Apple just doesn’t like the answers and is literally whining they can’t break the laws.

> is literally whining they can’t break the laws

From the other thread: "if the EU requires Apple to allow third parties to use the new screen sharing APIs with the same privileges, that would be a security concern" [1].

My guess: this is coming to the EU, just not at launch. Cupertino had to haul ass to get this to market on time. Creating a secure, open API for random AI engines isn't a priority relative to launching in the rest of the world.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40751654

Are companies now big enough that they can punish countries by withdrawing their products? This seems like yet another test of the boundaries.

Companies have decided that some markets aren't worth the headache since forever. Countries have fine-tuned their laws to be more or less open to foreign products since forever.

The EU is acting like it has a natural right to have American companies bring every product to its market no matter how burdensome its regulations are: it doesn't.

Sorry, but Apple is just acting stupid here. They are doing this out of spite and while doing it they are creating a large competitive advantage to others. Google, Samsung, etc. were earlier in rolling out AI features and now Apple is extending that window.

Samsung has seen higher sales of their S series in some markets, driven by the AI features of the S24, whereas iPhone has been flatlining or doing slightly worse. Given that Apple's lock-in is less strong in the EU (due to the popularity of WhatsApp, etc.), there is a good chance that Apple will use marketshare over this.

Given that Apple is also rapidly losing marketshare in China, I would be asking questions if I was on the Apple board or an Apple shareholder. The behavior of the leadership is increasingly becoming a risk.

Maybe they are being stupid! You can sell your Apple stock or short it if you like. But people getting indignant about Apple's decisions are not, it seems to me, mostly offering dispassionate market analysis.

Companies today have grown so powerful that they indeed can exert influence over countries by withdrawing their products

If the country literally makes your product illegal, or ambiguously potentially illegal, what other option do you have?

Companies of a certain size have always had this power, that's why they pit countries and states against each other when setting up factories and offices.

However in this case Apple are not going to pull any models from EU markets, that would be an own goal ceding the entire region to Samsung.

Over entire trading blocs. It's crazy.

I assume you mean the DMA and I don’t think it’s at all clear how it applies to the features Apple is holding back. If it’s so clear you should have no trouble explaining how it applies, I literally have no idea. I suspect Apple is also unsure and that has lead to them adopting a “wait and see” approach.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40751339

which indicates that something shady is going on

I'm definitely not gonna get all misty eyed because my phone won't receive additional surveillence software this September. If, and that's a very big if, I need some sort of AI functionality, I will either use a web browser or download the app.

Can you specify what kind of surveillance you would be getting?

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40751339

Bit odd to be claiming it (AI) is so bullet proof on privacy and then be concerned about EU regulators.

I bet that's 100% bullshit and the actual problem is EU DMAs interoperability requirement especially given the list of services: Phone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing, and Apple Intelligence

It's not odd. The concern is that EU regulators would make it less private.

By design Apple doesn't have access to your data used with Apple Intelligence, nor does anybody else. If EU regulators decide those features need to be interoperable and offered on a fully level playing field, that puts Apple in the position of having to provide third parties with access to data that they as platform owner have made a concerted effort to not have access to.

> Bit odd to be claiming it (AI) is so bullet proof on privacy and then be concerned about EU regulators.

The DMA has next to nothing to do with privacy and almost everything to do with opening up systems/features which Apple (rightfully in some cases, wrongly in others) claims will erode privacy. I don’t understand the point you are trying to make here. They aren’t concerned their features aren’t privacy-focused enough, they are concerned that if forced to open up it will compromise on privacy.

Most likely. You should be able to mirror you phone on a pc as well if the api was open which I guarantee it is not.

germany, with the eu held captive, is really going to die on the regulation hill.

there are so many structural issues, everything trending downwards but instead of fixing those, the bureaucrats are ready to keep innovation out even more strongly and the people are so blinded by the "doing good" rhetoric that they even support it to a large part.

the bigger news should have been the looming attack on chat privacy ("think of the children!") which is somehow ignored by the "look, we are fighting the evil american bigco over here" hand waving.

it boggles the mind how this strategy is supposed to pay off in any sense over the next years / decades.

Germany is against chat control [1] , it is other member states trying to push this.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/6/20/orwellian-eus-pu...

Not German so correct me if I’m wrong but I had the impression that the mainstream parties (SPD & CSU) are mostly pro or neutral universal surveillance but the Social Democrats wouldn’t risk the coalition with the Greens and FDP over something like this?

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