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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

>Or even more likely, as others have suggested, it’s Apple being petty and withholding features from EU users to put pressure on the EU.

The EU has threatened massive fines for creating features not available to competitors. And the EU refuses to vet a feature officially in advance.

Under such conditions, how would you distinguish being petty from complying with the law?

The EU probably imagined the outcome would be: change your business practices entirely for the EU, and make all new features open to all, immediately, perpetually, everywhere.

But that's not the norm for the vast majority of companies, for a variety of sensible reasons. Given that it's actually hard to do that, witholding new features until you're told "yes this is ok" is a rational response to the law.

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In terms of feature availability, if the law says they need to make it available to all headsets in the EU, then... that's what they need to do. Waiting for an "ok" to violate the law is not sensible at all. Sure they don't have to allow it worldwide, but they do need to allow it in the EU.

Waiting the way you describe only makes sense if they think the implementation probably follows the law, but they're not sure it will be accepted. We could make that argument for privacy rules, we can't in good faith make that argument for interoperability rules.

That's not what the law says. The law says IF they make a feature available in the EU, THEN it must be available to all competitors.

The law does not say you must make all features available in the EU. Generally speaking business regulations don't force companies to offer services. They instead regulate how the service can be offered if offered.

The hidden downside of regulation is a lot of stuff doesn't get built. It's just normally not so visible, but software is distributed worldwide so we can see the effect.

> That's not what the law says. The law says IF they make a feature available in the EU, THEN it must be available to all competitors.

You misread me.

"it" in the phrase "they need to make it available to all headsets in the EU" was referring to features they release in the EU.

So yes you're interpreting the law right, and so am I.

> The hidden downside of regulation is a lot of stuff doesn't get built. It's just normally not so visible, but software is distributed worldwide so we can see the effect.

If the deciding factor in whether something gets built is whether they can lock it to another product, it's usually okay for that thing to not be built.

In this case, they obviously did build it. So now it's a matter of figuring out what the hold up is.

If it's because they don't want to, even though it would make them money and make people in the EU happy, then that's pettiness.

Ah, I see what you're saying. The thing is if it is a cut and dry violation it ought to be in principle possible to say so. And there have been features that were delayed and released and which function the same in the EU as elsewhere. So presumably the implementation is legal but plausibly wasn't.

Now there's a difference between building a feature and building interoperability. You have to actually work at it. And if you rush to do so on every feature:

1. You may modify features you didn't need to

2. You open yourself up to other countries demanding specific software changes

The simplest thing is just to make one version for the world, and wait for an ok. Big downsides to either rushing to release as is or rushing to make a change you may not need to make.

Well the question as to whether it’s a “cut-and-dried” violation depends on information Apple probably isn’t willing to share: is there a specific technical reason this technology can’t be enabled on third party headphones? If there’s a good reason (e.g. the AirPods have a chip in them that does processing on the signal without which it wouldn’t work), then it’s probably fine. If it’s just `if (headphones !== “AirPods)`, then that’s probably not

As far as I understand, the act can’t control what Apple decides to do outside of the EU. Whether Apple has products or features available outside that market means nothing because it’s scoped to that jurisdiction.

I think that whether or not they built the thing does not matter.

I don’t know anything about jurisprudence, much less EU jurisprudence. Is there anything that would make the EU demanding that Apple not restrict these features from the EU to avoid allowing competitor products illegitimate in the eyes of the court? The law would still be only directly affecting the requirements for selling their productions under the EU’s jurisdiction. However it would consider facts about their behavior outside of the EU as essential to showing their noncompliance.

From what I know, the current rules don't say anything about region locking features like apple is doing. The EU regulations might be slow in reaction time but they are not playing around. You can be sure that they will continually close loopholes and avoidance strategies until Apple (and others) aren't a gatekeeper anymore.

The way Apple and others misuse their market position to get away with anything is ridiculous. At a certain size or influence you shouldn't be both a platform for other companies and products and a participant in that platform while giving yourself all sorts of advantages.

Airpods are decent but they have most of their market share due to the massive integration gap from competitors. So shit it's impossible for anyone to compete.

I’m not sure I’d call this a loophole per se. I don’t think governments should be refusing to let you take your ball and go home if you don’t want to sell things that create more compliance work/risk. I was just curious if this kind of jurisdictional edge case matters.

Do the relevant provider-agnostic Bluetooth audio standards (in USB they’d be class devices, not sure on Bluetooth terminology) have equivalent features that Apple is refusing to just implement? I think it’s reasonable to ask Apple to support interoperability standards once the industry settles on them, but it seems weird to incentivize them to create bespoke standards that they control in an effort to reduce their market power.

You seem to think they’re doing people a favor by selling them their products.

I’m fine with apple looking to exit the market and/or harm their product rather than comply.

This won't harm Apple or its AirPod product much, if at all. The Apple brand and its eco system is strong enough for the vast majority of average EU customers to ignore the missing features and buy the products regardless (at full price).

A missing fringe feature won't drive fans of the eco system away.

Oh, if I were travelling a lot to other countries speaking to non-english speakers and an alternative offers live translation and AirPods don't. Then this is pretty much the _first_ real argument of not buying AirPods. And once you do start switching out of the ecosystem remaining in it is much less attractive

>I’m fine with apple looking to exit the market and/or harm their product rather than comply.

It's not clear to me to what extent you disagreed with what I wrote. But, on this point I should point out that every time Apple holds back a feature citing the DMA there is much complaint in Europe.

So regardless of what you think it seems a lot of people do care. You appear to have a better understanding of the law: Apple can bring in a feature if all can use it or they can withhold the feature.

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