Apple vs. EU: The sludgeassel is getting bigger and bigger

Apple once again changes the rules in the EU part of the app store. The 500 million euro penalty of the EU Commission and the deadline until the Apple has to dismiss the complaints against the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to actively act as the iPhone manufacturer. However, the changes raise all kinds of new questions: In the future, Apple users are easier to complete subscriptions with alternative payment providers or to refer to offers on the web in the app. At the same time, however, the complexity of the new fee models for developers is growing massively. And that raises the question of whether the rules are accepted by the EU at all. For Apple users in the EU, the trials and tribulations that they have been with for some time have been continued.

The permanent dispute between Apple and the EU Commission shows one thing: It is much more difficult to regulate Apple’s complex ecosystem than originally thought as Brussels bureaucrats. Improvements in the competition do not automatically result from the fact that new doors and windows are added to the bricked house with the default hammer of the law. As with the alternative app stores, it is just only holes in the wall. But that’s why it is not someone to install a functioning new window.

Where has the simplicity gone?

In the worst case, it even rains through the new openings. This is the danger that Apple likes to emphasize. The EU enables great safety hazards and Apple is powerless due to the Digital Market Act (DMA). The host in Cupertino draws a helpless picture of himself. But you just don’t want to buy it to the iPhone manufacturer, who has had so many clever ideas in decades, that he should not be able to master this challenge.

Especially: the security is really not what makes you first worries as a long-time Apple user and app developer when you follow this permanent dispute. At least at the current discretion, it is more of an abstract danger directed into the future. A really concrete, current danger, on the other hand, is the loss of the simplicity for which Apple always likes to stand so much.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) took this desire for ease. It seems that the lawyers increasingly did business policy for the area of ​​the EU. It was right at the beginning when Apple adjusted to the DMA: only it was a parallel world with the alternative app stores, the nuclear technology fee and staggered fee rates that users and developers could easily switch off if they didn’t feel like it.

A mouse in Brussels

It was therefore quite predictable that the EU would not perceive this as promising if alternatives exist, but are hidden behind a curtain of daring extra -yields. One would like to play mouse in the conversations that take place in the past few months between Apple and the Commission in Brussels. At the beginning of the Commission’s appeal that Apple may not have developers who publish in alternative stores, no worse positions than those who publish at Apple. What happened then is in the fog. In any case, it came out that it is getting worse for everyone now. Because now it should also be complicated with the Core Technology Commission and graded fee models for developers for EU users. If developers select a cheaper fee level, there are no more automatic updates and downloads for these apps. Reviews in the App Store would also be missing. Who still looks through?

Is it now Apple that it happened? Or on the EU? Blame assignments are difficult because it is not quite clear who will talk past whom. Apple has been silent for a long time about how these talks actually work with the EU. Only recently seeped through how to imagine it. At the Apple headquarters, one tells of departments in Europe, where the competitive guardian refers to the other department when it comes to data protection. Or a lack of technical expertise when it comes to estimates the effects of regulation. And last but not least, it is complained that the wishes of the Commission would change again and again.

On the other hand, the tech companies are apparently quick to meet even the simplest requirements of the DMA with complex solutions. And so in the end the question is in the room again: is it really not easier?