On Tuesday, the European Parliament presented the statutory review of the Digital Markets Act. So, naturally, I went to Strasbourg to tell politicians that as DMA has only really been in force for two years, it’s probably too early to make any amendments. And while it’s been quite successful so far, we really need the Commission to enforce it more vigorously. (Many MEPs agree; last week, the European Parliament’s Internal Market (IMCO) committee called for the “full and proactive use” of all the Digital Market Act tools, and encourage the EU to resist external political pressure.)
As an independent European browser, Vivaldi needs access to platform controlled by vendors of competing browsers. It’s ridiculous that Apple is still able to impose impossible conditions on anyone who wishes to use their preferred browser engines on i(Pad)OS, and that Microsoft is still able to self-preference its own Edge browser on Windows.
If Europe is to achieve real digital sovereignty, the EU needs to monitor compliance -not just believe the Gatekeepers marking their own homework- and have the courage to impose real sanctions against Big Tech’s attempts to smother European compeititors.
I arrived the evening before my meeting, so had a while to look around Strasbourg, which was pretty.
And while Strazzy is (currently) in France, it has a heartily Germanic side to its cuisine. My dinner comprised most of a pig cooked in beer, and about a kilo of roasted potatoes (plus a salad and some bread):
The European Parliament was cool, and it made me sad that the UK is no longer included. Whatever the British Right may think of the European Project, Europe hasn’t forgotten the contribution that Britain made to ensuring a democratic Europe.
Let’s hope Europe is courageous against modern fascists and their industrialist friends as it was 80 years ago.
The whole world is on the streets, delirious with joy, as today one of the world’s largest companies turns 50 years old. The web is full of reminiscences about Apple products and Saint Steve, such as Apple at 50: My 10 most memorable moments. I haven’t been an Apple user for as long as many have, so here are my five top Apple memories.
The time Apple lied to the UK regulator
That hilarious time when Apple engineers added code to the Safari’s settings page to hide the option to change the default browser if Safari was the default, but then to prominently show it if another browser was the default. And then silently fixed it and lied to the UK regulator, pretending it never happened! Oh, how we all laughed.
The time when Apple told the EU that Safari is 3 different browsers
The loveable scamps in Cupertino tried to claim that Safari for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS are entirely different and serve different purposes to avoid being regulated in EU, but were caught out by their own marketing materials for its Continuity feature, which has the tag line “Same Safari. Different device.”
When Apple tried to shut the UK investigation down
Not-Steve’s minions went to the Competition Appeal tribunal and got the UK regulator’s Market Investigation Report dismissed, not by arguing before the tribunal that the CMA was substantially wrong about any of its anti-competitive behaviour, but on a legal technicality based around the timing of the opening of the investigation. This was reversed when the regulator went to the Court of Appeal. How we chuckled at Apple’s zillion dollar lawyers flushing taxpayers’ money down the iToilet!
When Apple’s VP of Finance got caught lying under oath
Alex Roman, Vice President of Finance, lied under oath in a US court. Judge Gonzales Rogers said
To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein, more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate…
Apple employees attempted to mislead the Court by testifying that the decision to impose a commission was grounded in AG’s report. The testimony of Mr. Roman, Vice President of Finance, was replete with misdirection and outright lies.
The one when Apple tried to wreck all EU Web Apps
Apple doesn’t want PWAs to open in third-party browsers that have more powerful features than Safari, because those would directly compete with native apps in its own App Store. However, in the EU, it can’t privilege PWAs in Safari with its own private APIs any more. And so its solution, in its spirit of malicious compliance, was to break all PWAs in the EU, just before the Digital Markets Act came into force, and claim that the DMA required it.
We organised an open letter, signed by thousands of businesses, large and small, and Apple reversed their decision.
“Contrary to Apple’s public representation, the removal of Home Screen Web Apps on iOS in the EU was neither required, nor justified, under the Digital Markets Act”, a commission spokesperson said.
But that’s not all
And it hasn’t only been fifty years of lying in order to evade being forced to compete fairly. Let’s not forget all the times when Apple pushed out showstopper bugs in Safari or left gaping cross-origin security bugs unfixed for months. Or how they’ve alienated developers and designers.
Who knows what the next 50 years have in store for Not-Steve and his successors? I’m old enough to remember when it was inconceivable that behemoths like BlackBerry or Nokia could disappear. Now we think differently.