Apple Vs The Law Copy the link to the current page Share the current page
A week ago today I had the pleasure of attending both the Apple and Google DMA compliance workshops in Brussels. More detailed articles on the questions and answers, technical and legal analysis etc will be published over at the OWA blog, where we've just done the first write-up on the Google part. Here though I'd like to focus more on my own experience and personal opinions, and how I feel about some of the gatekeepers' approach to the law...
If you haven't heard of it before, the DMA stands for the Digital Markets Act, an EU law which designates certains products as gatekeepers - based on end and business user count and importance, who need to interoperate with their competitors. So for example, an operating system which meets the criteria, such as iOS, Android or Windows, needs to provide equivalent access to software and hardware features to third-parties as they give to their own products. Gatekeepers can't self-preference, and so can't act anti-competitively. Some key examples for iOS would be allowing third-party browser engines and third-party app stores - two things they've outright banned until now, and for third-party devices like watches and earbuds to work as seamlessly as their own products. At the moment there's 7 companies with 25 different products designated as gatekeepers.
Onto the workshops: we started with Apple's first presentation on how they thought they'd complied with the DMA law. Most of the talk was used as a marketing opportunity, talking about how great Apple thought they were, and how unfair they thought it was that they have to comply with this law...
“We’re an amazing company"
“Apple is different to every other company out there”
“Apple alone have to comply with these requests”
"...unfortunately, it's impossible to do all the complex engineering to comply with the Commission's current interpretation of the DMA..."
You might've noticed Apple's use of "the Commission's current interpretation". This is a line they use rather a lot:
“extreme interpretation of interoperability by the EU”
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