Sounds great, except for the part where Apple is just going to appeal the decision and wait ~13 years for the appeal to be decided and pay whatever reduced fine is decided upon (further diminished by inflation). For example:
"My basic theory is that what the EC has wanted all along is to force Apple not merely open up iOS to other methods of distribution, but to force Apple to allow apps to be distributed through those non-App-Store channels free of charge. But they don’t want to come out and say, flatly, that they seek to forbid Apple from monetizing its IP from all developers on the platform, because that’s so radically anti-capitalist. " That's such an uneducated take, I can't believe. If you enforce competition I see it as a very pro capitalist move.
I generally have the feeling that a lot of people don't "really" understand what the world "capitalism" means/entails.
Like they often quote why capitalism is supposedly good and that because of this various marked oversight mechanism are bad. But fail to realize that all the good parts really only work if you have a capitalistic system in the original meaning of the word.
I.e. you have a properly competing open marked where consumers have in practice a real choice to vote with their money.
But in the real world there can be various things which can fundamentally undermine capitalism with the most obvious one being monopolies. When too many of such things come together in a too dominant way the practically eliminate the benefits capitalism has for a country at which point is as much still capitalism as a strawberry cake from which someone removed all strawberries is still a strawberry cake.
But too many people (IMHO often without realizing) push for making it illegal to keep strawberries in the strawberry cake because how would the bakery make money of the strawberry cake has to contain strawberries.
Anyway at the core all of following is in conflict with capitalism: patents, copyright, DRM (the apple case is kinda form of forcefully removing DRM like restrictions), IP law, goe fencing etc.
And especially for patents we have a lot of IRL examples how having them less can vitalize a marked.
But at the same time there are also a lot of reasons to have all of that in some form (not necessary the current form) because in the end the real world are a bit more complicated then the ideal of capitalism.
In addition (to obviously trying to strengthen competition), this law also strengthens the position that users bought a functioning device over which they have control. That includes hardware and software and any required libraries and runtimes.
Apple is free to include their perceived "share" in the device price or any optional cloud services, optional developer tools or optional (with competition) app store fees.
I suspect they will to have to reduce their margins siginificantly.
Edit: The cited take is even more uninformed than I initally thought. The EU is many things but people working their have been in the law making game a day or two. They 100% expected some shenanigans from Apple and friends and designed the DMA accordingly.
It is no coincidence that this enforcement actions comes almost instantly (in "regulator time") .
The idea of the EU as "radically anticapitalist" is very funny. I'm sorry the DMA happened to you or whatever, but it's just another boring market regulation.
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...