Their vision being that they should be able to extract money from all activity on an iPhone?

They sure have hated it. It&#x27;s completely in conflict with their vision of what a smartphone should be and how it should be used.

I don&#x27;t think so, this can be interpreted as &quot;malicious compliance&quot;. We will need to see the next steps about to be done by EU.

Apple loves to do the bare minimum to meet the regulations. I&#x27;m sure they hated having to do this.But, this is still better than not doing it at all.

&quot;New frameworks and APIs for alternative browser engines — enabling developers to use browser engines, other than WebKit, for browser apps and apps with in-app browsing experiences.&quot;

They state the exact opposite in the second sentence of the article. Please, at least read the opening paragraph before commenting.

So I&#x27;m guessing you didn&#x27;t read the article then?

No need to imagine, the answer is at the top of the article.

It does, but on closer reading looks restricted to EU, they certainly aren’t suggesting a , say, gecko based browser could be published globally outside the EU.

I would imagine this doesn&#x27;t open up the opportunity for other engines.

Ah, I clearly didn’t read it closely enough. Thank you!

FTA:The changes include more than 600 new APIs, expanded app analytics, functionality for alternative browser engines

Um, no. Regular users care about being able to run ublock origin.

that&#x27;s the case now but in the future you can now offer regular users features that currently only android chrome can do

&gt; Regular users really don’t care what browser is running the web pages they’re looking at, everyone who downloads chrome does so to get their synced bookmarks and history.This is ahistorical. Regular users switched to Firefox and Chrome in droves from IE. And it wasn’t to sync their bookmarks. It was because they provided a much better experience.If Blink or Gecko are able to provide a better experience than WebKit on iOS that would certainly prompt many users to switch to browsers using those engines.

That&#x27;s like claiming only mechanics are interested in what engine a car is running - regular users only care about the seat and steering wheel.Regular users care about the experience of the browser. A superior rendering engine can potentially improve this experience.

That&#x27;s exactly what I predicted for NFC when Apple announced Apple Pay. Apple kept developers from using any of the NFC APIs until they were ready to roll out Apple Pay, and then only allowed non-payment NFC after that. It gave them 10 years to establish Apple Pay.Being the system default was obviously very convenient for customers and there would be a very high bar for any other payment app to compete, but Apple wanted to make absolutely sure there was no possible competition.

&gt; Regular users really don’t care what browser is running the web pages they’re looking at, everyone who downloads chrome does so to get their synced bookmarks and history.As a regular user - I do.

Per Macrumors:&gt; Apple is giving app developers in the EU access to NFC and allowing for alternative browser engines, so WebKit will not be required for third-party browser apps. Apps will be able to offer NFC payments without using Apple Pay or the Wallet app through Host Card Emulation. Apps can also access field detect, and a default app can be set to activate when an iPhone is placed near a terminal.Although this only changes things for us developers. Regular users really don’t care what browser is running the web pages they’re looking at, everyone who downloads chrome does so to get their synced bookmarks and history.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;25&#x2F;ios-17-4-alternative-app-marketplaces-eu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;25&#x2F;ios-17-4-alternative-ap...</a>

Well first version it will be different WebKit wrappers, as they are the only option available on iOS right now.But they simultaneously open the door to other browser engines, so I imagine Firefox at least will release their app with a new browser engine down the line.

So now European users could be using Firefox with mobile gecko engine, but no one in the US will ever test with that because they&#x27;re not allowed to have it. Fun!

&gt; To reflect the DMA’s changes, developers will be able to use alternative browser engines — other than WebKit — for dedicated browser apps and apps providing in-app browsing experiences in the EU.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;dma-and-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;#browser-alt-eu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;dma-and-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;#...</a>

Nitpick but a browser engine is much more than the rendering engine.

Writing this on FF for iOS, the biggest reason I want to use the Firefox engine is for Firefox extensions. WebKit doesn&#x27;t support extensions except the App Store ones in Safari, I want to use traditional extensions from AMO. Just let me use uBlock on my phone!I do agree, the Firefox iOS UI is clunky, but I find it useful for stuff where I want to sync passwords or tabs. I use Safari for browsing the web casually because it&#x27;s nicer, and the feature of swiping between tabs is so convenient.

&gt; actually choose a different browser, or are you choosing a different WebKit wrapperI understand the &quot;WebKit wrapper&quot; for iOS criticism and do want different rendering engines available (e.g. Firefox&#x27;s) and yet...The worse thing about Firefox for iOS is the wrapper part, not the lack of rendering engine choice part. The UI of Firefox on iOS is inconsistent and buggy, and syncing doesn&#x27;t sync well, etc. I doubt using FF&#x27;s own rendering engine instead of WebKit would help the situation, as it&#x27;d drain engineering resources away from making the &quot;wrapper&quot; more usable.I&#x27;ve always used Firefox, on Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, everywhere I can, but I find myself using it less and less on iOS... and it&#x27;s not because of the rendering engine!But since this change for the DMA will allow FF to use its own rendering engine (in the EU), hopefully maybe it&#x27;ll reenergize the development of FF and improve the &quot;wrapper&quot; part more - even for non EU users!

they have to do that anyway, or did you forget all the non-iOS mobile users?

Wonderful; now devs have to support a plethora of browsers on iOS instead of just one -- the same shit-show as on the desktop.

&gt; Today, iOS users already have the ability to set a third-party web browser — other than Safari — as their default. Reflecting the DMA’s requirements, Apple is also introducing a new choice screen that will surface when users first open Safari in iOS 17.4 or later. That screen will prompt EU users to choose a default browser from a list of options.Any idea if this means you can actually choose a different browser, or are you choosing a different WebKit wrapper (e.g. the current version of Chrome on iOS)?

&quot;Do you accept cookies?&quot; I wish there were a non-browser-extension way to auto-accept.

I honestly thing this is a hard thing to solve.You can&#x27;t make people care and constant notifications are just fucking horrible &#x2F; doesn&#x27;t help IMO.And I&#x27;m honestly not sure most people would understand anyway ...

The entire thing reads like the corporate version of a teenager throwing a tantrum.

This reads like a crybaby manager upset with their future metrics.

Apple themselves don&#x27;t seem to have a problem with displaying a red notification dot&#x2F;badge on the &quot;Settings&quot; app to anyone who doesn&#x27;t set up any card in Apple Pay on their new devices, at least.

&gt; There are literally thousands of options for configuring your device in the Preferences app. Should we put all of them in front of the user&#x27;s face the first time they set up their phone?This is an absurd comparison. The choice of picking the default web browser, a complex pieces of critical software on everyone&#x27;s mobile device, is categorically different than almost every single one of the other preferences on the device. You&#x27;d have to be completely insane to claim that e.g. the preference of whether a double-tapping space on the soft keyboard should insert a period is remotely comparable to choosing the default web browser.

There are literally thousands of options for configuring your device in the Preferences app. Should we put all of them in front of the user&#x27;s face the first time they set up their phone? How would they know those options exist otherwise?Knowing that you can configure your phone&#x27;s behavior should be a basic point of technology literacy. I know that it isn&#x27;t at 100% today, but what percent of users are now going to have yet another forced decision to make before using their phone for the first time, just so a minority of technology illiterate users can be &quot;educated&quot;.

&gt; This change is a result of the DMA’s requirements, and means that EU users will be confronted with a list of default browsers before they have the opportunity to understand the options available to them. The screen also interrupts EU users’ experience the first time they open Safari intending to navigate to a webpage.How will users be able to understand the options in front of them unless they are presented with it in the first place?

&gt; Apple can control the safety of their SW and cannot vouch for not-their-sw,Isn&#x27;t this the main argument for a locked down app store? That Apple CAN ensure the safety of third party apps on its store?

The DMA introduces zero risk. Users are absolutely able to use the Apple App Store, Safari&#x2F;Webkit, etc like this as they did before.So no, Apple isn’t factually correct.In fact, it’s very possible that Gecko or Blink have more secure engines than WebKit. It’s very possible someone can create an App Store that is even more vetted than Apple’s and eliminates scam apps and games whose only purpose is to separate you from your money.So it’s not only not accurate, it’s probably diametrically the opposite of accuracy and is false.

These EU laws start with the current circumstances and motivation why the law exists. An objection to why DMA is bad can be found in the first two recitals:&gt; (1) Digital services in general and online platforms in particular play an increasingly important role in the economy, in particular in the internal market, by enabling businesses to reach users throughout the Union, by facilitating cross-border trade and by opening entirely new business opportunities to a large number of companies in the Union to the benefit of consumers in the Union.&gt; (2) At the same time, among those digital services, core platform services feature a number of characteristics that can be exploited by the undertakings providing them. An example of such characteristics of core platform services is extreme scale economies, which often result from nearly zero marginal costs to add business users or end users. Other such characteristics of core platform services are very strong network effects, an ability to connect many business users with many end users through the multisidedness of these services, a significant degree of dependence of both business users and end users, lock-in effects, a lack of multi-homing for the same purpose by end users, vertical integration, and data driven-advantages. All these characteristics, combined with unfair practices by undertakings providing the core platform services, can have the effect of substantially undermining the contestability of the core platform services, as well as impacting the fairness of the commercial relationship between undertakings providing such services and their business users and end users. In practice, this leads to rapid and potentially far-reaching decreases in business users’ and end users’ choice, and therefore can confer on the provider of those services the position of a so-called gatekeeper.It&#x27;s a bit long for HN comments (although 257 words is about a minute of reading) but I didn&#x27;t really know what could be fairly cut outFull text: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&#x2F;eli&#x2F;reg&#x2F;2022&#x2F;1925&#x2F;oj" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&#x2F;eli&#x2F;reg&#x2F;2022&#x2F;1925&#x2F;oj</a>

What factual objections do you have? Apple can control the safety of their SW and cannot vouch for not-their-sw, so from Apple&#x27;s point of view this is 100% accurate.

Illegal behaviour is illegal no matter how you install things.

Can’t wait for Instagram (via the Meta store) to begin ignoring the tracking pop up option the user chose.

The number of Apple fanboys in tech that cheer every anti-consumer move by Apple really boggles my mind. Other companies rightfully get called out, ex: Unity recently, but for Apple they will make excuse after excuse.

You mean the ones which are incoherent or profane? Most of this thread is people talking about the tone so if there’s some conspiracy trying to flag things they’re remarkably ineffective.

Weird how nearly every top-level comment pointing out the salty tone of the press release has been flag-killed. It&#x27;s actually really unique: You almost never see corporate PR dripping with attitude like this one.

They have to wrap all of this in ton of FUD to make sure users outside EU don&#x27;t get jealous and demand the same options.

&gt; Across every change, Apple is introducing new safeguards that reduce — but don’t eliminate — new risks the DMA poses to EU users.What a line...

Likely because they anticipate increased competition to the App Store now, and want to pre-empt the attractiveness for developers of moving to the Epic Store or the Facebook Store etc.

I couldn&#x27;t figure it out -- is it? Payment is now a separate extra 3% and there&#x27;s the new core technology fee.Maybe somebody more familiar with the details can explain. It&#x27;s hard to compare when the structures are different like that.

This is fantastic. But why a reduction in Apple’s fee for AppStore distributed apps? I hope the rates drop to these globally.

Absolutely! That&#x27;s how the &quot;walled garden&quot; business model works.

Apple patch their browser twice a year at best; Firefox gets updates every month, plus security ones. Apple is hardly a model of virtue in the sector.

I don’t think it will used against Blink and Gecko for obvious compliance reasons. But this clause will help Apple pressure them to keep security updates timely (which is a good things for the users).On the other hand they will likely use this to deny all ‘niche’ browser engine without a structured organization behind them (think Ladybug, maybe servo etc.)

Yeah, if they wanted to keep users safe, all device permissions would be user controlled and all permissions would be default off.

Maybe you shouldn&#x27;t use an example that is synonymous with viruses and malware throughout its history.

Or not publishing documentation (they were also forced by the EU to do so ironically) that has allowed the likes of OpenOffice to read Office docs and become a legitimate alternative, because of security (Office docs are a security risk and showing hackers how they work makes them a bigger security risk…).

Its usual BS from Apple. Imagine Microsoft blocking all non-store applications from running on Windows &quot;to help keep users safe&quot;. No I&#x27;m not cheering for Microsoft to do the same. Its strange, but I want Apple to be more like Microsoft in this regard.

That is fine as an app store policy, but they also want to impose those requirements for apps outside the appstore. That is a problem, if I want to run a sketchy browser downloaded from github apple should not be able to prevent this

No it&#x27;s not understandable. The iphone is a Turing complete computer. I should be allowed to install whatever I want on it.
If I want to install a reskin of firefox then I should be able to do that. It&#x27;s certainly not up to Apple to decide this for me.

While I agree with you, I think it is already possible to make a &quot;browser&quot; on iOS today that tries to steal your data. The only thing stopping it is manual review, not any technological measures. In fact, if the point of an app is to steal your browsing data, it is easier for them to stick with WebKit and WKWebView than to invest in a new browsing engine. Existing APIs provide plenty of opportunity to inject almost annything into web views.

Does that actually happen on Android though?

I think it seems pretty clearly meant to include major competitors like Firefox and Chrome and Edge if Microsoft wants, but you can&#x27;t just include a random build of Chromium that you never update.And this seems understandable to prevent a proliferation of 100&#x27;s of &quot;browsers&quot; trying to steal your data. You actually have to be developing something legit -- not just reskinning a browser engine and leaving it.

&gt; This criteria seems arbitraryThat&#x27;s the point, but they sound nice

Pretty funny to see &quot;use memory-safe programming languages, or features that improve memory safety within other languages&quot; as a requirement when WebKit itself is built on top of C++ code.I wonder if Apple would be allowed to ship WebKit if they enforce this requirement under the spirit of the EU laws that made them change their minds.

&gt; Pass a minimum percentage of tests available from industry standard test suites: 90% from Web Platform Tests and 80% from Test262Why is it any of Apple&#x27;s business how many test suites a third party browser can pass?Why can&#x27;t iPhone users run Links if they want to? Why can&#x27;t they run a browser without Javascript support? Why can&#x27;t they try out Ladybird to see how development is progressing?Like, even from a pure Apple-is-greedy perspective I don&#x27;t understand the point of this.

On first glance, the browser stuff is mostly fine and seems to be motivated by security and UX concerns.In the end it&#x27;s not a big impact on apples revenue if some people run chrome or Firefox.The store part on the other hand is really sketchy.

Read through the technical announcement for browser engines <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;alternative-browser-engines&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;alternative-browser-engi...</a>These requirements are things like &quot;Use memory-safe programming languages&quot;, &quot;Adopt the latest security mitigations&quot;, if you ship your own certificate trust you should &quot;provide information on how a root certificate authority (CA) can apply to become part of the program&quot;.All seems like pretty basic conditions designed to ensure that only Mozilla and Google can comply.To be honest, the browser engine stuff seems significantly more robust and permissive that I was expecting.

&gt; An application that has permission to map memory pages as executable is a coveted target for spyware and malware as it provides a much better starting point for pivoting to root and pwning the entire OSNo more than any other app. It runs anyway in the app sandbox, and can only access the resources that are accessible from the app sandbox itself. For the application to gain root privileges it would need to exploit a flaw in the sandbox itself, something difficult these days.Android allows applications to map memory pages as executable (in fact you can also launch any Linux executable as a subprocess) and there was never an issue about security: if you don&#x27;t have a rooted phone you don&#x27;t have chances to get code running as root, since everything runs in the app container.And if there is a flaw that allows escaping from the app sandbox, it can probably be exploited without being able to map memory pages as executable anyway, since it will probably be a flaw in a kernel system call or library function.So really: this was always a limitation that Apple did impose to not allow in practice competing browsers in the Apple store, since a browser to be efficient this day needs to compile code as JIT, as well as not allowing applications that benefit for JIT execution (such as emulators or compilers).

What I&#x27;m hearing from this, is that JITs are a security hazzard so we should all move to interpreted wasm

Browsers that bring their own javascript engine will likely also need to support JIT in order to be able to compete with Safari on performace. Doing JIT on iOS requires a special entitlement grant from Apple in order to map memory pages as executable. An application that has permission to map memory pages as executable is a coveted target for spyware and malware as it provides a much better starting point for pivoting to root and pwning the entire OS. Most other regular apps, even if they have a buffer overflow somewhere, will require a lot more fiddling in order to execute arbitrary code, and are thus a lower risk for users to install.In short, browsers will have higher privileges that normal apps, as they can execute arbitrary code in memory, so they are naturally held to a higher standard.To be honest I am happy about this. I don&#x27;t trust a random banking &#x2F; government &#x2F; public transport app contracted out to the lowest bidder to be safe from all buffer overflows or other memory safety issues, so making sure they are sandboxed away from executing arbitrary code is a good thing.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;dma-and-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;#browser-alt-eu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;dma-and-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;#...</a>&gt; To help keep users safe online, Apple will only authorize developers to implement alternative browser engines after meeting specific criteria and committing to a number of ongoing privacy and security requirements, including timely security updates to address emerging threats and vulnerabilities.This criteria seems arbitrary. Doesn&#x27;t this allow Apple to arbitrarily prevent competitor engines like Blink and Gecko?

Apple approves apps on their marketplace.Apple approves alternative marketplaces.Apple approves all apps on all marketplaces.

No, you&#x27;ll need to install through an approved alternate marketplace. See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;dma-and-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;#ios-app-eu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;dma-and-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;#...</a>

Sadly no information here about the mechanisms for how alternative app stores will work, which is the most interesting part for me. Will the .ipa format be standardized like .apk and will we be able to make iOS apps without having to use macOS?

The tone of the release is really something. So much shade.

I wanna know when I&#x27;m gonna be able to use native Firefox with addons enabled instead of Safari-coated unusable crap

But they say that browser engines are allowed. So can they JIT?

In notarization rules, no executable code download is allowed

If they actually okayed it, then I hope the EU reconsiders. In effect, Apple&#x27;s tight grip on what apps you could run remains. I am also disappointed that those changes are EU-only, I hope most governments impose similar laws so that Apple just gives up and makes it global.

From yesterday’s WSJ article [0]:“Officials from the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, have been holding meetings in recent months with Apple and other tech companies to discuss the new rules. Apple hasn’t provided a final package describing its solution to the commission or tested its plans with market participants.Once it does, the commission will review the full package to look at whether it will make the market more open and contestable, and whether the company’s plans meet all the individual provisions of the law, according to a person familiar with its plans.”We’ll see how that goes.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;Hk39s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;Hk39s</a>

Apple and the EU have been discussing the implementation for some time so it seems extremely likely this has all been OKed already. In particular, I’m sure the issue of apps (FB app with a virus or spyware) on a random App Store is a concern to the EU.Not defending Apple per se (they sure don’t need help) but going with the public statements of both Apple and the EU leading up to this.

You could actually disable the notarization enforcement entirely on the Mac or selectively depending on the file. So I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s that bad.

That would be crazy if it were true. The only thing that is enforced on Mac is a scary pop up window.

&gt; I haven’t seen a single instance of them not notarizing something or revoking it for something that wasn’t actually malicious.Apple did threaten to cut off Epic&#x27;s ability to notarize Unreal Engine[0], until ordered not to by the court[1].[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;08&#x2F;17&#x2F;apple-terminate-epic-developer-accounts-august-28&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;08&#x2F;17&#x2F;apple-terminate-epic-de...</a>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;10&#x2F;9&#x2F;21492334&#x2F;epic-fortnite-apple-lawsuit-restraining-order-unreal-engine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;10&#x2F;9&#x2F;21492334&#x2F;epic-fortnite-ap...</a>

&gt;I haven’t seen a single instance of them not notarizing something or revoking it for something that wasn’t actually malicious.Do you think they would notarize a PornHub app?

You can install any app you want on the Mac, notarized or not. You might get some kind of warning, but that&#x27;s irrelevant.And Apple only allows certain kinds of apps through their notarization process. They can&#x27;t have pornogrpahy, they can&#x27;t allow things that could break copyright etc.

No, notarization can be turned off on the Mac in ~15 seconds. Open a Terminal and type `sudo spctl --master-disable`. Enter your password and press enter.You can also right click an individual unnotarization .app bundle and select `open`, then affirm your intention in the scary warning prompt.P.S. The Mac also lets you disable SIP, install unsigned kernel extensions, and rewrite kernel memory to your heart&#x27;s content. This is admittedly a bit more involved.

Does Apple charge Mac developers a price per notarization? Because it sounds like that&#x27;s effectively what they&#x27;re doing here with iOS developers, since they require notarization and also require a fee per install for distributing outside the app store.It&#x27;s a protection racket - pay us and we won&#x27;t flag your app as malware.

Notarization has been enforced for all apps on the Mac for years. Would the DMA have an issue with requiring signed drivers? Seems a similar baseline. Personally I’m totally ok with that. I haven’t seen a single instance of them not notarizing something or revoking it for something that wasn’t actually malicious.

I assume the notarization is there to enforce this, which is why I think it is way worse than the fee itself.

&gt;I think perhaps notarization is OK, for example you have to pass requirements to publish on other closed platforms like games consoles.In that sense, the old system is OK as well, no?

&gt; for example you have to pass requirements to publish on other closed platforms like games consolesBut those would be the requirements of those platforms.I can make and publish games for the Pico-8 console without any requirements. Could you imagine if Microsoft had the ability to veto any Pico-8 game I wanted to make?

The entire point of this legislation is to open up the Apple&#x27;s mobile platforms to competition. It&#x27;s not (supposed to be) a closed platform. With notarization requirements, third party app stores are just an extension of Apple&#x27;s app store with a different logo!

I think perhaps notarization is OK, for example you have to pass requirements to publish on other closed platforms like games consoles. What I think is very underhanded is charging per install for &#x27;core services&#x27; rather than per app review. It&#x27;s not like the app has to be notarized&#x2F;reviewed for every install.

&gt; Too bad it&#x27;ll take another 3-5 years to fix.Sounds like we’re getting a fat paycheck from Apple via the EU in the meanwhile then.

I don&#x27;t see how this isn&#x27;t effectively an app store in itself. If Apple can forbid an app from running on user devices, then they need to approve every app that is installed. More importantly, they are effectively blackmailing developers to pay them &quot;per install,&quot; which is only enforceable through the notarization process.That sounds an awful lot like an app store.I agree, the EU will not like this. Too bad it&#x27;ll take another 3-5 years to fix.

While I don&#x27;t disagree that the EU won&#x27;t like it, I don&#x27;t see this as malicious compliance. The only reason this hasn&#x27;t been in iOS up until now was distribution was already restricted through the app store. There was already signing going on. This just moves the signing to being an explicit step because distributors won&#x27;t be signing for the App Store.

The problem with disabling notarization, is that it&#x27;s something any trojan-horse malware author would have a glossy slideshow walking you through doing as part of the install process for their &quot;meet sexy singles in your area and double your money instantly!&quot; app.And then you&#x27;d run the app, and it wouldn&#x27;t blow up your phone, but just be a bit disappointing and something you&#x27;d delete — but meanwhile, the app would have used some 0day exploit to get a foothold outside the app sandbox, and so now your phone would be a silent node in a botnet, able to be C&amp;Ced to DDoS targets or act as a VPN for nefarious account registrations or so forth.(Did you know that there are many such botnets made of Android devices? But none so far for iOS devices. There&#x27;s a reason for that!)---If it&#x27;s not clear, by the way, Apple&#x27;s &quot;notarization&quot; is, under the covers, just plain-old code signing. Just like every modern consumer OS has for apps, regardless of whether you get them from an app store or from the web. So that the platform can protect users from obvious viruses by just revoking the code cert.Mind you, notarization is code-signing that requires you to submit your binary to Apple... but it&#x27;s my understanding that this notarization still operates in two phases — a quick, synchronous phase, and a slower, asynchronous phase — and that the synchronous checks in the notarization process, before you get your cert signed, are only checks against the known signatures of various exploit techniques. (Again, just like every other consumer OS comes up with some way to get done — whether that be through required submission at signing time, or by submission of novel software by virus scanners that find the software on your disk, or even by web browsers as they download the software. Just try to develop Windows software, on Windows, without implicitly submitting binary &quot;samples&quot; to Microsoft through some route or another. It&#x27;s very hard!)Apple is somewhat unique among platforms, in having certain other virus-signature like patterns that their notarization backend takes note of, that won&#x27;t trigger synchronous rejection, but rather will trigger Apple employees to do an async review of the application. (AFAIK, when this happens, you still get your app&#x27;s cert signed right away; the cert might just get blacklisted some time later, if it turns out under closer human scrutiny that you were in fact doing something malicious.)It is my understanding that the things Apple flags for human investigation, consist of use of certain system framework calls, that only very powerful and low-level system software should be doing — think, the sorts of calls unique to Virtual Machine hypervisor software, or to third-party file-system driver software. Rootkit code-smells, in other words.Note that none of this is about what your app does for the user. Apple&#x27;s notarization system — as Gatekeeper on macOS, or as part of Enterprise MDM iOS app deployment — has never suppressed or censored any app due to its nature. It&#x27;s only about what it&#x27;s doing that it&#x27;s not supposed to be doing &quot;according to what&#x27;s on the tin.&quot; Apple is doing the same thing through notarization that the FDA does to foods and drugs: holding companies to their claims of their products being fit-for-purpose and non-adulterated.(And although this is currently entirely a thing Apple is simply trusted to do in good faith, there&#x27;s nothing stopping the EU from mandating that Apple&#x27;s notarization going forward, consist of exactly these kind of technical checks and no more. I think that&#x27;d be a great idea, personally.)

The key here is &quot;proportionate&quot;. Notarization surely adds to the security of the platform, but it may be misused by Apple easily ...

The &quot;duly justified&quot; might not be that far reaching. Sure, notarization seems like a valid cause, but there is no reason why it should be exclusively the provider of one specific app store who offers notarization. In particular, if it happens that it is more onerous or restrictive on non-Apple stores, that justification starts looking very shaky.

This falls squarely under the exemptions for security reasons under article 6 sub 4 of the DMA.&gt; The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking, to the extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate, measures to ensure that third-party software applications or software application stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system provided by the gatekeeper, provided that such measures are duly justified by the gatekeeper.
Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall not be prevented from applying, to the extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate, measures and settings other than default settings, enabling end users to effectively protect security in relation to third-party software applications or software application stores, provided that such measures and settings other than default settings are duly justified by the gatekeeper.

&gt; Notarization for iOS apps — a baseline review that applies to all apps, regardless of their distribution channel, focused on platform integrity and protecting users. Notarization involves a combination of automated checks and human review.Does anyone know if notarization is something you could turn off? If you can&#x27;t, then I&#x27;m pretty sure the EU won&#x27;t like this; obviously &quot;malicious compliance.&quot;

“It’s very dangerous but we will allow our users to download and install apps from the internet”.

Related article from theverge.com<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39132487">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39132487</a>Apple is allowing alternative browser engines in iOS 17.4 – but only in the EU

Which we know from the IE dominated era does not matter, people just switch to the browser they have to use. The overwhelming majority of users do not know what a user agent string is, let alone how to change it they just see an increasing number of sites saying &quot;you need to use IE&#x2F;chrome&quot;.Moreover, again from the IE era - and we already see this with chrome - people make their sites work in IE&#x2F;Chrome and then label any browser doing something different as broken so as people are increasingly forced to use chrome the degree to which spoofing does not work steadily increases.

Most of these websites should be accessible using user agent spoofing.

Looking forward to being required to use Chrome for basic browsing.I already see numerous sites that with chrome variations on the old &quot;we only support IE&quot;, but at least until now devs had to at least allow at least one other browser. Now they&#x27;ll just say &quot;here&#x27;s a link explaining how to install chrome&quot;.

You just need a non-profit behind (or a government) and it should work just fine, they are exempted from the fees.The ruling is mostly there to prevent google and meta from creating alt stores (which is a benefit to us).

I must have missed this section in the DMA!All I want is a F-Droid-esque store with sane apps. You know, open source apps, centrally built. No in-app-purchases and Chinese geotracking framework for something that is 25 lines of code to talk to some bluetooth gadget.

Sure, but your apps have to be renewed every 7 days (or 365 if you have a developer account).

I have sideloaded IPAs now, on iOS 17.3. Altstore.

&gt; The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking, to the extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate, measures to ensure that third-party software applications or software application stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system provided by the gatekeeper, provided that such measures are duly justified by the gatekeeper.Looks like Apple tries to make a case to exploit this statement, which sounds exactly like a malicious compliance.

You tell the user what entitlements or permissions are being requested at the point of the app trying to use them, stop treating the users like stupid children and let them make an educated decision about how to use the hardware that they own.There are limits on Android anyway, what your side-loaded apps can do without you using a custom ROM or rooting the device is restricted somewhat.

Android (Pixels specifically, so not a derivative of Android) does this and platform is just as secure

Which Android malware problem? Android has a permission system, every permission an app has needs to be approved by the user, and some permissions only system-apps can request.There is no need for an app store review process to stop apps from requesting the &quot;write to other application&#x27;s data&quot; entitlement; this can be enforced by the phone itself.

This is complete nonsense, the permissions are enforced by the OS, not by the store approval process, same for accessing the various parts of the file system.

Ok, so I get that you want to be able to install random binaries on your phone, but I want to understand how you think that could happen without undermining the platform security model?The inability of binaries to do malicious things on iOS is the result of the sandboxing and entitlement mechanisms of the platform. The store review and approval process is what stops applications from including entitlements that undermine the platform security. If you remove that step from the process there is nothing stopping an application shipping with the system entitlements that allow the application to read or write to other app data, or the entitlements to talk to system services without prompting permission dialogs, etc.If you want to remove the review and approval systems that the App Store has (and it sounds like are going to be required for 3rd party stores?) you have to have an answer for that. Otherwise you just end up with the android malware problem.

Having a $100k bond to get a license to provide professional services is pretty common in other industries.

Welp, that rules out anything like F-Droid.&gt; The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper.&gt; The gatekeeper shall, where applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software applications or software application stores from prompting end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users who decide to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default to carry out that change easily.&gt; The gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and providers of hardware, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same hardware and software features accessed or controlled via the operating system or virtual assistant listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9) as are available to services or hardware provided by the gatekeeper. Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such servicesHow is requiring them to have access to $1M acceptable, or compliant with the legislation?&gt; The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking strictly necessary and proportionate measures to ensure that interoperability does not compromise the integrity of the operating system, virtual assistant, hardware or software features provided by the gatekeeperApple state the $1M requirement is to allow for providing support to customers. There is no allowance for doing that in the regulation, and no reasonable argument can be made that lack of customer support has an impact on the integrity of the operating system or hardware. I can understand scanning software or asking for it to be uploaded and signed, that could be justified. Not this.

There are also mentions of web browser-based installs, but all apps are being notarized and encrypted.Edit: Upon looking into this further, it appears that only marketplaces can be installed from a web browser. [1][1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;marketplacekit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;marketplacekit</a>

&gt; To qualify for the [MarketplaceKit] entitlement, you must:&gt; [...]&gt; Provide Apple a stand-by letter of credit from an A-rated (or equivalent by S&amp;P, Fitch, or Moody’s) financial Institution of €1,000,000 to establish adequate financial means in order to guarantee support for your developers and users.Just let us sideload IPAs, please.

Please no needless notifications all the time..

Apple had a chance to embrace the DMA, even to save face, and become a (albeit mandated) champion of these changes.Instead, they&#x27;ve gone for hostility and pettiness and, no doubt, fully intend to maliciously comply.&gt; The screen also interrupts EU users’ experience the first time they open SafariAnd it will be the last time.

It sounds like the percent fee is for apps downloaded from the app store plus the 3% if you use apple payment processing. Then theres a .5 euro annual fee per user over 1 million no matter which market the app was downloaded from.

Separate any discussion about the &quot;tone&quot; of the article, could someone who is better at reading between the lines better than I explain the changes to Out-Of App Store payments?Is it a 10-max 20% fee to Apple, no matter the distributor, in the EU? Or are those rules only for the App Store, and anything else won&#x27;t be touched by commissions to Apple?

I don&#x27;t think it includes updates. From the calculator [0]:&gt; The first time an app or game is installed by an Apple account in the EU in a 12-month period.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;fee-calculator-for-apps-...</a>

Well it does count updates. So this is just bullshit from Apple.

It is not per update and the most significant thing is that it is also for apps that get distributed outside the app store. Which is the real issue and that is definitely insane

paying for what? for NOT using their infrastructure? it&#x27;s not just crazy, it&#x27;s criminal

This counts one install per 12 month period, whether update or fresh install (new user). So it’s €0.50 per user device. For application providers that opt into the new terms and release updates every two weeks like clockwork even if there are no meaningful updates for 300Mb application bundles (Facebook, Duolingo, a few others)…this is likely a fair cost (and my suspicion is that yes, there&#x27;s a premium, but it&#x27;s probably not Apple&#x27;s usual 20%+ premium on products since many applications would not be subject to this fee at all, even under the new terms).

It&#x27;s high - but it&#x27;s not that crazy.Assuming this doesn&#x27;t count updates - the service is probably costing Apple €0.10 on average. Apple has a very hefty margin on everything it sells.If each update costs €0.5 - I suspect this is going to lead to a massive decline in European apps. That&#x27;s simply too expensive for almost every app.There&#x27;s probably less than 1000 apps this would make any material money off of.This is just another way for Apple to try to tax Facebook, Google, and a handful of other big apps.

&gt; Am I correct in thinking this applies to apps that aren&#x27;t monetized?You are correct according to their calculator [0]. If I say I have 2M annual installs (1M over the &quot;free tier&quot;) and no in-app purchase it will cost $45,290&#x2F;mo[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;fee-calculator-for-apps-...</a>

That fee was per install, not per install-user-year.

Unity wanted to charge for every single &quot;install&quot;, where that category was defined so broadly that even loading the game in a web browser was an &quot;install&quot;, and someone downloading and deleting and downloading the app over and over on a device was also repeated &quot;installs&quot;.Here Apple is tracking an install across the entire user account per year, so even if you have tons of devices and install the app on every single one of them, that&#x27;s still just one &quot;install&quot;.

Unity wanted to change their existing pricing structures in place.The Apple change isn’t really comparable (not saying it’s good or bad) because Apple are introducing a new pricing structure.Most genuine critics of Unity’s proposed changes were fine if it wasn’t replacing what existed.

&gt; This seems unusually high.Looking at Unity wanting to charge 20 cents and the game development industry falling over itself to explain how that will never ever work for them... I dunno, maybe other app types (firefox, a mastodon client, osmand, local public transport.. looking at random examples from my homescreen) make enough money from their users and this will be doable for them when microtransaction-laden games couldn&#x27;t make 2&#x2F;5ths of that price work out

Hitler watch out, apple app developers are trading your place in hell!

Hi, bad person here, happily building apps for their devices.They missed out on €0 because government entities, non-profits and educational institutions are exempt from the install fee.Alternatively you can also just stick with the App Store and pay 15%&#x2F;30% over revenue without install fee, which would also be €0 in your hypothetical.

If you had read you would have found that government entities are exempt from the CTF fee

Imagine how much money they missed out on by not charging $0.50c for every install of those government COVID tracking apps all over the world.Apple is a scumbag company. Any developer who continues to support Apple by building software for their ecosystem is a bad person.

&gt; that’s assuming 1 smartphone&#x2F;citizen, which is probably too much.sure kids &lt;5 years old probably don&#x27;t own smart devices. But many those EU citizens will own also ipad, apple watch and probably some older devices that they use from time to time (as a backup)

The support doc is slightly more informative: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;core-technology-fee&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;core-technology-fee&#x2F;</a>Free apps aren’t exempt. The fee is only for EU users. If you take the EU iOS market share of 33.3% [1] and the number of EU citizens (448 million) [2], you get ~150 million — and that’s assuming 1 smartphone&#x2F;citizen, which is probably too much.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;os-market-share&#x2F;mobile&#x2F;europe" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;os-market-share&#x2F;mobile&#x2F;europe</a>
[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Demographics_of_the_European_Union" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Demographics_of_the_European_U...</a>

Yeah well you are benefiting for Apple’s hardware and software so you need to pay. Can’t be a free-loaded just because you want to earn that extra bit of money while increasing the attack vector for the end user.

Yes, I think so.So apple wants to require they approve your app and then charge you €0,5 for every time it is installed for the privilege of avoiding using their infrastructure. It is honestly insane. I don&#x27;t know the DMA in detail but I hope it is not and gets smacked with fines. And I hope if this is allowed the DMA gets updated so this is no longer allowed.

They specifically excluded iPadOS, watchOS and TvOS.

It might be effectively even higher if it’s per device rather than per user.A Spotify user could cost €2 on per device terms if they installed on their Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad and AppleTV.

They say its a bit under 1% of developers. According to this article, they have 34 million registered developers:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;appleinsider.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;22&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;apple-now-has-over-34-million-registered-developers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;appleinsider.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;22&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;apple-now-has-ove...</a>So, it&#x27;s probably within a factor of ten of 340,000 developers. That&#x27;s a lot of apps.

&gt; Core Technology Fee — iOS apps distributed from the App Store and&#x2F;or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.This seems unusually high. I would expect that a large number of apps meet this threshold.
Am I correct in thinking this applies to apps that aren&#x27;t monetized?

Isn&#x27;t that implying that EU laws only apply to EU citizens? Surely that can&#x27;t be the case.

It will apply to EU citizens probably, so who have the location of the Apple account in a EU member state. You can change the location, but only once per half year.

I wonder what happens if you travel from the US to EU and then back. Will you be able to install alterative browser while in EU and then it gets blocked?

Oh, wait, is this the Unity situation again ?!?

&gt; Core Technology Fee — iOS apps distributed from the App Store and&#x2F;or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.If I&#x27;m reading this right (and I did double check this with ChatGPT [0]) if you have an app with two million unique installs annually, you owe Apple 500 000 euros. That seems to include free apps as well.[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chat.openai.com&#x2F;share&#x2F;905c5c45-657b-477c-a746-0468dd7747a7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chat.openai.com&#x2F;share&#x2F;905c5c45-657b-477c-a746-0468dd...</a>

That&#x27;s a good question, I don&#x27;t understand how this is enforced either.

Even the WebKit wrapper browsers (including Chrome and Firefox) didn’t have access to JIT until iOS 8 when WKWebView was introduced. UIWebView is in-process and not allowed to use JIT.

There is (was?) no mechanism for JIT, so even if there was a working local build, it wouldn&#x27;t be a competitive browser engine.

IANAL but I speculate that having explicitly rejected competition could hurt Apple in certain legal proceedings?

What would have been the point? It was explicitly forbidden.

Is there any record of another browser engine being summited to the app store and the outcome? AFAIK when I worked at Mozilla I&#x27;m not aware that Gecko was ever submitted even though I saw a working local build.

These changes are the definition of Malicious Compliance, I hope the EU goes down hard on this bullshit

Right?! It&#x27;s a masterclass in being petty. They seem to know exactly what screws government&#x27;s won&#x27;t turn and built the &quot;not-app store&quot; on top of them.

If it really is as it sounds, I give the EU one month max before they &quot;fix&quot; this. The EU doesn&#x27;t like it when large corpos purposely use loopholes to go against the spirit of the law.

I&#x27;ve got to say, this whole thing is... clever. I&#x27;m not defending Apple here, but I am saying that the way they seemed to figure out policies to comply with the letter of the law while making it seem pointless for a developer to switch to a third-party app store... well, it definitely does make Apple look smarter than the EU, that&#x27;s for sure.

&gt; Notarization for iOS apps — a baseline review that applies to all apps, regardless of their distribution channel, focused on platform integrity and protecting users. Notarization involves a combination of automated checks and human review.&gt; Authorization for marketplace developers...&gt; Core Technology Fee — iOS apps distributed from the App Store and&#x2F;or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.Amazing. All this regulation and hand-wringing to just to make it exactly the same developer experience as before but now you can click the download button in another app. Plus now every app not just ones that use IAP for digital goods is gonna get a $500k annual fee once they hit 2M users. The EU really showed em who&#x27;s boss.

Yes, but these extensions work by intercepting the search results to your default search engine e.g. google and then redirectin that to kagi.com.For example you type in &quot;hacker news&quot; it will first redirect to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;google.com&#x2F;search?q=hacker%20news" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;google.com&#x2F;search?q=hacker%20news</a> the Kagi extension will intercept this and redirect you th <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=hacker%20news" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=hacker%20news</a> but this is often a hit and miss and the Kagi extensions had&#x2F;has many problems. Which all could be easier if one could just select Kagi as a search engine natively in Safari.

I thought this was already possible, albeit with extensions. Kagi for example has an extension for iOS users.

Will Apple Users also have the option to use other search engines in Safari than the default ones? Or is this something that the DMA does not cover?

Why wouldn&#x27;t YouTube just distribute through App Store like normal? It&#x27;s not like they are paying Apple per download there.

Afaik there are currently no exceptions to apple&#x27;s 30% fee. There are some apps, like netflix, that dont have to provide a link to subscribe, but I think thats the biggest exception.

Well, that and meta is the very reason behind these changes.

YouTube will not pay that amount of money. There will be deals in the background like usual.

It says &quot;each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold&quot; which I think means as long as you&#x27;re updating your app at least once a year, you pay for each device your app is installed on (minus 1 million, which is a rounding error for the biggest apps).

They’ve been discussing the implementation with the EU for some time so it seems extremely likely this has all been OKed already.

As an aside, look how clear and well-written this web page is. I&#x27;m always blown away by how well the whole Apple ecosystem (even the the developer documentation) is designed

Indeed. Clarification here in the calculator’s pop up:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;fee-calculator-for-apps-...</a>

The vast vast majority of apps doesn&#x27;tBut I agree, as expected, this will go to round two.Probably not even a new DMA just a court case about malicious compliance. The DMA was written expecting apples reactionStill that they will reduce the commission fee is quite important on its own.If this reduces the flood of free ad financed apps and moves the market to a more sustainable model I&#x27;m all for it (although I realise this stance is probably controversial)

$45k per month. Annually it&#x27;s &gt; $540,000Also, updates do count.&quot;A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and&#x2F;or a custom app.&quot;

It looks like updates can count as a first annual install:A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and&#x2F;or a custom app.However, there&#x27;s extra mumbo jumbo about &quot;it doesn&#x27;t count for 12 months after a first install is counted. But the next one after starts a new first annual install.&quot;So it&#x27;s essentially some kind of twisted Orange County MLM logic.

If they publish through the App Store they pay nothing though (for a free app), so won’t this just mean free apps stick to the Apple App Store and apps over the break even price (€0.50&#x2F;30% commission in the App Store) go to side loading?

&gt; 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue&gt; this seems obsceneThis is why I never cared about the 30% take: it was combining all the costs you&#x27;d have anyway into one simple number. People just acted like those things were all free just because Apple wasn&#x27;t explicitly listing them.Could you optimise your expenses better by splitting them?Probably.And that may even be worth forcing the issue from a competitive PoV, because it means some customers will be effectively subsidising others: A weekly updated 2 gigabyte app that&#x27;s free in the app store gets its bandwidth paid for in part by a 30 Mb app that charges a $10 monthly subscription and gets an update every 3 months.But even then, companies are expected to make profits. What&#x27;s the level where it&#x27;s fine for Apple to say &quot;we want this much extra just for us&quot;? For a lot of people the answer seems to be &quot;zero!&quot; — while this probably would not disincentivise Apple from making iOS given they also profit on the hardware, it would almost certainly disincentivise Google from bothering with any updates to Android.

This is only for devices in the EU, there aren&#x27;t 2B devices here.

&quot;First install per year&quot;. So reinstalls after a year will be charged again. Honestly, it makes sense to charge for the bandwidth Apple provides. I&#x27;d rather see it broken out than baked into a 30% fee. Doing so would massively incentivize smaller binary sizes.

Feels like Unity all over again. This time with a trillion dollar company instead of a billion dollar one.

&gt; 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue&gt; this seems obsceneThe web browser is right there. You don&#x27;t have to have an app.

So force the consumer to pay everything in a two sided market?

Yes also for updates or pushed via mdm. But only once per account. Doesn’t matter how many devices you have on that account. It counts as 1 install every year.Yes the fee is insane.

Well it&#x27;s per install. And knowing apple, they might even count an update as an install.I suspect there&#x27;s a DMA v2 coming, and it&#x27;s going to be much much harder on them with this behaviour.EDIT: 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;fee-calculator-for-apps-...</a>2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenuethis seems obscene

Except the price only exists for large spenders in the first place.

Historically, from emails and the such made public through the courts, Apple has resisted making such deals.

Larger spenders never pay list price. There’s always a negotiation.

Many of the companies I work with have completely given up on operating in the EU because of this.edit:
Why downvote me for stating a matter of fact?

Those are just basic things which should have been implemented 10 years ago though. The fact the EU had to push laws for that is a bit shameful.

Apple is never gonna financially recover from these impossible demands.Come on now, that is utter nonsense. Apple has simply found a way to make even more money out of what seemed like a bad deal for them. They are not recuperating anything, they are increasing revenue.

Europe has a fairly blase attitude towards compliance costs in general.For example, the official EC report on the cost impact of the EU AI Act finds that, for businesses who already have a Quality Management System (QMS), &quot;An enterprise employing 50 persons would pay roughly EUR 159,000-EUR 202,000 for upgrading and maintaining the QMS, and bringing one AI product to market.&quot; (Notably, that estimate excludes costs of legal review.)Around 200000 EUR for one product making use of AI would be seen as a heavy burden on startups and small enterprises in much of the world, but as far as I can tell, it&#x27;s considered not particularly noteworthy by the EC.Apple&#x27;s cost structure announced today probably needs to be assessed in that context. Tech companies doing business in Europe are already used to various additional compliance-related costs of doing business.

Apple chooses this level of control for the iOS store. Being told your previous version was illegal doesn&#x27;t entitle you to recoup the costs of compliance.

There is significant cost associated with complying with the ever increasing demands of the EU. I have seen this personally. It makes sense that they have to recuperate this somehow.

&gt; Core Technology Fee — iOS apps distributed from the App Store and&#x2F;or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.Sounds to me like developers have to pay the per user fee no matter where the app is distributed.

There&#x27;s also no 1MM install threshold if you list your app on an alternative App Store, which seems like it will kill the attractiveness of using a different storefront unless you&#x27;re a developer with a an app that has a recurring subscription that&#x27;s either a) just not allowed on Apple&#x27;s storefront, and&#x2F;or b) has an subscription price expensive enough that the $0.50 annual fee is less than the amount of commission you&#x27;re avoiding from Apple.

50 cents per install per year is hilarious trolling from Apple. Who wants to place bets on who will sue them first over this detail? Will it be the EU? Epic Games?

This is what I came here to find out. So it seems Apple will still get their cut. Seems they are nerfing things to make the existing App Store more appealing.But I guess Tim Sweeney won in the EU. He gets his new AppStore so he can charge his own commission on gems and fake tokens.And game streaming seems interesting I guess we will get Xbox streaming gaming on the Apple platform after all.

It just means that the bar has been raised, no? There has been a certain accepted cost of doing business in the Apple sphere for years. They&#x27;re just changing the price.

This also means you can’t provide an app for free anymore if it becomes sufficiently popular. Monetization is the only way.

A significant part of this announcement seems to be the €0.50 &quot;Core Technology Fee&quot; that Apple will now charge for &quot;each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold&quot;.I think this essentially means that large developers pay €0.50 * (num apps they publish) * (num devices each app is installed on) per year. There are 2 billion active iOS devices [1], so I think that for the biggest apps like YouTube the fees could be in the hundreds of million USD per year.4 of the top 5 most downloaded apps of all time [2] are published by Meta (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp), and I think they will pay this fee for each app?[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;02&#x2F;02&#x2F;apple-two-billion-active-devices&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrumors.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;02&#x2F;02&#x2F;apple-two-billion-activ...</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;App_Store_(Apple)#Of_all_time" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;App_Store_(Apple)#Of_all_time</a>

Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union