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Comment by fragmede | Hacker News Reader

Sorry if it's a sore question, but is the UK in the EU (For the purposes of Apple's DMA compliance)?

Edit: best I could find is "no", according to techcrunch from August 2024

https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/21/uks-competition-authority-...

I wonder, if another country were to leave the EU in the future, would Apple actually go in and modify the code (or enable a server flag) to remove the feature from all of those country's users' devices?

It just seems so wrong to own a device, but still have the manufacturer dictate what that device is allowed to do, AND they have the ability to change those capabilities at will. It feels like buying a physical calculator, where the manufacturer can one day wave a magic wand and I lose the "divide" button. I'm generally an Apple fan and I get that people like Apple's "walled garden" but even to me this seems like an abuse.

They need to do that anyway, because the laws depend on the country. There is no other option: different sets of laws are often incompatible, there is not always a common subset that works everywhere. So the behaviour of the device has to change depending on the location.

But yes, it is silly in this specific case. I’d like someone to explain credibly why letting users delete apps is wrong. In the worst case it’s a minor pain and the user has to re-download it from the store. These apps are thin UI layers over system frameworks anyway.

> the behavior of the device has to change depending on the location.

That wasn't the case in a previous era. A country could make a decision that says division is illegal and ban new 4-function calculators, but all the calculators made before that would still work the same. Banned books could still be read if you already had them. Today thanks to the double-edged sword of constant connectivity, it's plausible that Apple can just add and delete features when you pass over physical borders, meaning that the set of functionality you buy is increasingly ill-defined. You don't own a phone, you just own a conditional license to the iPhone experience, which they'll tweak over time to comply with various governments on the most limited geographic scale possible while maximizing their revenue.

None of this is that shocking or interesting now that we're used to it, but it's annoying that we don't own or control the devices we buy and can't even guarantee they keep a certain feature set.

It used to be, it's not anymore.

No, it is not!

Brexit meant leaving the EU.

Look at all the freedom we gained in the UK!

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