Google eng mgr here. I've worked on a few projects related to compliance with various government policies. This isn't "assign a two-pizza team to it, will be done in a quarter"; these types of compliance efforts can mean completely redoing multiple core systems to handle privacy, wipeout, audit, reporting, per-location policies, etc etc. These efforts can involve hundreds to thousands of people for multiple years.

Sure, there's a messaging component to this. However, any company that isn't trying to just skirt the law will aim to do this sort of thing correctly, and it's an enormous effort.

As I follow the situation, it seems that regulatory uncertainty is a major issue though- the EU’s requirements are framed in terms of outcomes sought, rather than in terms that can be quantitatively shown as met or broken. So it’s not a matter of dedicating a team to meet a list of requirements, but instead navigating the worst case scenario of enforcement if post-launch the EU determines that the proscribed outcomes aren’t being met.

Throwing infinite money at engineering problems doesn't move deadlines arbitrarily.

But Apple's position here is actually really wild: Apple claims to protect user privacy all the time. But they can't offer a product in a major jurisdiction that has actually meaningful privacy laws? Didn't they consider that while designing the product?

This is quite the contradiction.

I think there's a reasonable question of whether the Siri stuff is even a feature that customers want. Additionally, money can not solve all problems, 9 people can't make a baby in a month, and if these sorts of regulations are serious at all like they are for medical regulation then you really do need to do the work of assessing risks, etc., and there's a chain of waterfall development to all that.

> It's not as if Apple doesn't have the money to dedicate a team to matching the EU's requirements on a deadline. They just choose not to.

The one legacy in Apple that Steve Jobs left behind is their distaste for taking risks that lose them money (ChatGPT was going to be their AI core... but then they had Altman ousted, so they backed away and partnered with Google instead), and spending money. I think they're still the only company with a kitchen in the valley that still makes employees pay for their own lunch, and the reason is the most BS reason that Steve Jobs pulled out of his rear end. It's so the employees appreciate the lunch, really?

In the end Apple is a business and the EU is a dwindling market, they have to choose smart.

This has the "do you even know who you're talking to?" air from Apple. Everyone should comply but not us, we're too cool and too damn important.

Personally, I wouldn't want Apple to comply with this EU law and I hope that more companies refuse to release features with onerous requirements. Opening up all access to control the phone to some random app the consumer installed seems super dangerous.

Apple has a third of the EU market to itself. It would be just insane for the EU to give an exemption that means the law doesn't apply a third of the time.

Do the f*n work to make it compliant! Its not like they're some bootstrapped company running out of a van. I can't say I'm always in favor or how compliance works but its a valid requirement.

so you think its just a matter of ppl working through paperwork?

seems a bit simplistic.

It would only be a backdoor if it's implemented as a backdoor.

The way Apple Health exchanges data with 3rd-party trackers (Fitbit, Garmin, etc.) is very well built and a good model of how other components in iOS could allow data exchange with very granular permissions.

Apple touts the "Private Cloud Compute". If they found a way to share your personal context to process on their cloud in a private and anonymized way, there is no reason the same process couldn't be used to handoff data to a 3rd party AI provider.

iPhones have pretty good privacy controls. I don’t see how they can’t extend those to cover AI apps. I imagine the settings menu will get bonkers though. User education about apps slurping up all your data is needed regardless. People just trust apple with their talk of private cloud computing.

it's denial all the way down, but i don't see the circle, hence i am denying to upvote ;-)

Depends on the news you read I guess, to me the word "slammed" is pretty commonplace in politics news-reporting and has been for a while (read: well before the modern take-down content that's so common to social media platforms).

The whole point is to try and avoid ending up in situations like this, where apple were able to extort 30% of app store revenue because they dictate how people are allowed to use their devices.

AltStore is hugely popular, and that is DESPITE Apple going out of their way to scare people into using the App Store.

Why make fun of freedom?

Have some dignity. We all deserve the right to fully own our general compute devices.

> “We have hundreds of thousands of users,” AltStore co-founder Testut told TechCrunch in an interview. “Wonderful and good numbers.”

Zero idea if its true tho.

it's still being litigated wrt to alternative app stores: https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/04/epic-games-asks-u-s-supreme-c...

the core technology fee is a big obstacle to alternative app stores.

openclaw is massively popular. there is a lot of diversity in "persona" agents, which are different than coding agents or the agent apple demoed. they're not all the same.

i don't know, i don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.

I believe that the issue was that the EU wanted Apple to open up their new AI agent interface (the ability to control every app on your phone so Siri can call you an Uber or whatever), and Apple thought that it was too risky of a capability to give to any random AI app right out of the gate.

It's not about privacy. It's more like if Siri is allowed to read your emails, then Gemini and ChatGPT should too. If anything it's opposite of privacy protection.

This doesn't have anything to do with privacy.

The DMA mandates that Apple allows for competition, which (if you believe in capitalism) is good for the market overall. It's essential to stop big tech from abusing their market dominance. However Apple would prefer to not allow competition for their digital products on any of their hardware.

EU does not want privacy. They actually want to get rid of privacy every so often (adding backdoors in encrypted conversations). So far it has not worked out, but I’m afraid they will succeed at one point.

To follow along that line of thoughts, the requirements they are actually asking for proper DMA compliance would probably go right in that direction tbh.

I, for one, am happy Apple is taking a stance, and, as an European would really much like my government to stop asking ridiculous things that do not profit the consumer.

If they can comply with China’s unreasonable demands, they can comply with the completely reasonable EU demands.

They already claim to care about your freedom and privacy. Now they can prove it.

For context, under German law recording spoken words without consent is illegal. There is some nuances when speaking in public loud enough for strangers around to hear though

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st...

It's a geoblock. EU accounts can use the features when outside of the EU.

> If you make a list of tentative companies that would integrate their stuff to the OS like Siri it’s very likely all those are major US companies

Mistral. I’d bet my bottom dollar that the French are the reason the EU is holding firm on its position.

google/gemini has not complied properly to DMA in android AFAIK

Have you considered that the EU's privacy laws may simply be onerous and burdensome, and the fact that a web of red tape has caught another fly may not actually reflect on the privacy claims of "groundbreaking Private Cloud Compute"?

The DMA is not a privacy law.

put quotes on privacy laws.

The APIs in iOS that turn feature flags on/off as you travel now have gotten insanely complex. Some are on time triggers, some change instantly, some depend on where your iCloud account was setup, AFAIK there isn't a black and white answer as to what happens when you move a non-EU iPhone through Europe anymore, "it depends". It's similarly vague in the other direction.

Apple themselves have claimed recent EU compliance has led to over 600 new or changed APIs in the OS.

I've spent a fair amount of time with my iPhone in both the EU and the USA, have local cell service registered in both regions. its nothing as simple as a geo-location check anymore. It's a problem that has grown more complex over the decades too, as more and more countries implement their own slightly differing legislation.

From past experience, it is when you are physically in the EU, but this implementation could obviously differ from how they've gated features in the past.

You will get the features when you're in Japan, and have them for about 2 weeks when back in the EU, then they will be disabled until you leave again.

It's referring to legal jurisdiction, not anyone's personal relationship with nationality or residence.

I mean, borders still exist, and laws apply within borders. I don't believe that national (or supra-national in the EU's case) sovereignty is yet a dinosaur of the past.

> Europe accounted for nearly 27% of Apple's total sales in its last fiscal year

I don't know about every vendor, but Apple probably doesn't want to lose 27% of their sales.

Right, wanting operability, alternative default apps, equal access to APIs is "wanting to live in the stone age". POSIX is the stone age model, and Microsoft is the future.

There is a saying "American trust companies more than their government, Europeans trust their governments more than companies" when nobody should trust either.

Sometimes a company's incentives are going to be aligned with their users, but a lot of the times they won't and consumer protection regulation is useful.

Sometimes a government will have the good of their citizens in mind, and a lot of the times they will seek money and power just like companies do. Lobbies, fines, overreaching regulation.

The UK (and EU's attempted Chat Control) is some fascist bullshit. But allowing you to own the device you paid for and use it as you please (including letting you install whatever software you choose to) isn't.

Apple stock rises leading up to WWDC and then drops following the keynote every single year. People keep betting that this is the year that they're going to announce the next iPhone and the stock is going to 10x.

The whole market is down

I don't think the GDPR came from an effort to surveil, but the world has changed in the last ten years and I do agree with this assessment today.

One of the main rights enabled by the GDPR is to request to have data deleted, how would that facilitate surveillance?

Ah yes the well known EU equivalent of the CIA, NSA

The one that’s so secret it’s not in any of the treaties that the sovereign nations that comprise the EU signed up for and implemented in line with their own democratic processes

That agency

Meanwhile they struggle to put together a border patrol, but advanced pan European surveillance apparatus that isn’t run by the US. Yeah bro

What's to wonder. Those third party apps are not part of the core OS and others apps can't access them.

Because this is not related to the GDPR at all, but the Digital Markets Act (DMA). It's purpose is to enable competition and not allow big tech to abuse their market dominance (e.g. in this case Apple not wanting to grant any competition the same access to MacOS so that they don't have to face competition for Siri AI).

This isn't GDPR, it's DMA. They're not subject to it.

This is about the Digital Markets Act, its not the EU saying it isn't secure enough, they are saying users should be able to choose to use the same functionality but with different AI providers.

Compliance with DMA would have Apple hand over system-wide access to AI features to third parties, which could compromise user privacy and security.

I am not very sympathetic to apple here, but I think the legislation in question is more to do with competition than data privacy.

It's the inverse problem. EU wants anyone to be able to install a different AI agent onto their phone with the same access as Siri. Apple says "no- we need time to figure out how that would work, we want other agents to meet the same privacy standards of PCC/on-device that Siri uses". Which EU said no.

I don't think there's a clear good guy/bad guy here.

This conflict applies to many tools that require high privileges:

* If you allow the user to grant those privileges to third-party applications, they can grant it to applications that abuse it, resulting in security and privacy risks. You might even be blamed for allowing them access (e.g. the famous Cambridge Analytica scandal).

* If you don't allow the user to do that, third-party tools won't be able to serve those needs, which can be considered anti-competitive preferential treatment of your own tools.

The interoperability of their AI doesn't meet EU standards.

You've got to be delusional if you think the EU has a good grasp of AI.

EU wants people to be able to plug any model into the new Siri system that will have unlimited access to all of your messages, photos, what's on your screen, browsing history, etc.

Apple says hey so we're going to need some time to figure out if we can do that in a way that won't completely fuck over our users.

Very different than the narrative you're pushing

If antimonopoly system would work, you would be able to install any OS on those devices. Iphone sucks if you install freebsd there, very useless hardware.