Notices by Steve Troughton-Smith (stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)

Meta is very publicly doing what _every other company in the US_ is going to be doing in the near future. This is about as much of a heads-up big tech is going to give. You might want to save some of that anger to channel later, because an awful lot of vulnerable groups are going to be relying on your voice

The ’cultural realignment' is real.

https://www.404media.co/meta-deletes-trans-and-nonbinary-messenger-themes/

@dansup good luck with the launch[es]! 😄

Chilling. If the wake-up call hasn't set in yet, we outside the US really need to start viewing all US-based companies as from a hostile aggressor, beholden to imperial dictates, not law. As a new dark age engulfs America, the rest of us must do what we can to insulate ourselves from the fallout

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEhf2uTJUs0/

The Apple Intelligence vs BBC story is a microcosm of the developer story for the feature. We're soon expected to vend up all the actions and intents in our apps to Siri, with no knowledge of the context (or accuracy) in which it will be presented to the user. Apple gets to launder the features and content of your apps and wrap it up in their UI as ‘Siri’ — that's the developer proposition Apple has presented us. They get to market it as Apple Intelligence, you get the blame if it goes awry

Apple leadership would rather bend the knee, kiss the ring, and ‘donate’ a million dollar bribe to a convicted criminal than follow the EU's competition law in good faith, which should tell you everything you need to know about values over there

“Apple shall implement the measures above in the next major iOS release, and in any case by the end of 2025 at the latest.”

How granular is this stuff?

"If Apple presents end users of [3rd-party apps] with a choice regarding the level of background execution capabilities or background connection to a connected physical device, it must present the same choice in the same manner, including regarding time, place, and cadence, to end users of Apple’s connected physical devices. Apple may only present end users with a specific choice […] if Apple implements and offers this choice for its own connected physical device.”

Re AirPlay and Chromecast et al

"Centralised availability: Apple shall allow third-party casting providers to centrally provide their casting solution on iOS, e.g., through an extension, such that end users who install the casting solution can access the third-party casting provider in any third-party app that uses standard media playback APIs without the need for the third-party app developer to integrate an SDK in their applications.”

"Apple shall make available the possibility for a third-party connected physical device to become an AirPlay receiver, i.e., allowing the iOS device to cast content to a receiving third-party connected physical device, to all interested third parties independently of the product category, for video, audio, and screen mirroring”

"For future functionalities of or updates to the AirDrop feature, Apple shall make them available to third parties no later than at the time they are made available to any Apple connected physical device.”

"Apple shall provide a protocol specification that gives third parties all information required to integrate, access, and control the AirDrop protocol within an application or service (including as part of the operating system) running on a third-party connected physical device in order to allow these applications and services to send files to, and receive files from, an iOS device.”

"Apple shall not impose any contractual or commercial restrictions that would be opaque, unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory towards third parties or otherwise defeat the purpose of enabling effective interoperability. In particular, Apple shall not restrict business users, directly or indirectly, to make use of any interoperability solution in their existing apps via an automatic update.”

EC having to legislate around Apple's poison pills, which is wild. Apple is that untrustworthy

"Apple shall not impose any restrictions on the type or use case of the software application and connected physical device that can access or makeuse of the features listed in this Document.

Apple shall not undermine effective interoperability with the 11 features set out in this Document by behaviour of a technical nature. In particular, Apple shall actively take all the necessary actions to allow effective interoperability with these features.”

"For the purpose of ensuring that effective interoperability continues in the future, third parties must also have access to any future feature functionalities and updates of the media casting feature insofar and as soon as they are available to Apple’s AirPlay. For example, if Apple updates AirPlay to stream video at higher resolution, or to allow end users to initiate screen mirroring via an AI assistant, these updates should be made available to third parties as well.”

Again 2025 deadline

It's always amusing when detractors cry that the EC’s policy-makers know nothing about technology, but even a casual reading through their proposals and specs would tell you they have extensive amounts of input from subject matter experts

(From the case PDFs at https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/dma100204-consultation-proposed-measures-requesting-interoperability-apples-ios-and-ipados-operating_en, a separate set of studies/proposals on Apple's interoperability mechanisms)

My takeaways from the proposal: the EC is prepared to go into detail on specific features, mandate various avenues of interoperability and APIs required, ensure that Apple can't make them burdensome in implementation or by policy, set a concrete timeframe for the changes to be made (i.e. by next release of iOS), and ensure that Apple can't pull the rug out from under these APIs in the future or self-preference for new or unannounced devices. All the proposals are great, necessary changes

This proposal effectively states that Apple should provide private headers to internal frameworks on request, and developers should subsequently decide whether they need to submit an interoperability request to make the frameworks or APIs public

The European Commission is going through Apple’s OSes feature by feature, with the help of interested parties and industry collaboration, and deciding where the API lines should be drawn. It’s absolutely fascinating.

And remember, Apple brought all of this on itself through its years of misconduct and inability to follow the law.

Don't miss the 30 pages of proposed specs in the PDFs here (summarized in screenshots here; no alt-text, follow through to original link): https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/dma100203-consultation-proposed-measures-interoperability-between-apples-ios-operating-system-and_en

When real news is hidden behind subscriptions, and fake news is freely available, it's no wonder the world is where it is. Capitalism at work