John Gruber has a long take-down on the DMA. There is plenty to think about in this, but a quick comment on his point about Chrome:

My guess is that, perhaps counterintuitively, the single biggest beneficiary of this mandatory browser choice screen will be Google Chrome, which I consider the single most dominant software monopoly in the world today.

This rings true. Google puts Chrome in your face everywhere. Perhaps one side effect of this is that Apple is going to need to do actual marketing for Safari.

@manton am I missing something or does this post really not mention browser engines whatsoever??

@manton Surely if Google are abusing their position to promote Chrome, they will also be the subject of DMA restrictions. They may gain a bit on iOS, but that would be more than compensated by the extra competition on Android. In theory, all gatekeepers should lose. That is the whole point. More competition.

@neoyokel I don’t think it mentions it. But in fairness it wasn’t attempting to cover everything, just a couple specific parts of the DMA. Browser engines are worth a follow-up.

@manton The world considers Chrome a better browser. I don’t agree with that, but you only *truly* get better *with* competition, not default placement. Approval for more resources in your own org, more time with scarce resources in other orgs. Applies to pretty much every app category there is.

@manton In the context of the Gruber piece, I also wonder about Microsoft. Surely if anyone was going to be in trouble for integrating AI it would be them, with 90% of the PC market, and Copilot being OpenAI only. So not really convinced Apple are being genuine.

@manton A lot of commercial/enterprise SaaS software these days is written for Chrome. It often isn't even tested in other browsers and if something goes wrong support will direct customers to use Chrome.

@manton To me all the criticism is just about missing the forest for the trees. The main question for me is "do you think there should be an equal footing between Apple's built-in apps and third-party apps?" And if yes, they should functionally work the same. That leads to some weirder changes like being able to remove the camera app, but it's honestly just a minute detail in an otherwise reasonable change.

If the DMA had been in effect 10 years ago, I don’t think Apple Watch would have been available in the EU until and unless the EC said it was permitted. Same for AirPods, which pair with Apple devices in a vastly superior but proprietary way compared to standard Bluetooth. Any sort of integration between an iPhone and another Apple device that isn’t available to third-party devices could be ruled to violate the DMA. By the letter of the DMA, the EC should, I think, rule that all such integration is a violation.

He almost touches it, but he doesn’t quite get it: The problem isn’t that Apple is making good integrations — that’s fantastic! It’s that they refuse companies like Jabra to do the work to have their earbuds work as well as AirPods.

(And if Apple, instead, wants to do the work themselves, they could of course provide the necessary APIs. But I’m not saying Apple has to do Jabra’s job — but it’s a problem when they deny Jabra the possibility to do it.)

So his last sentence in the quote above misses the point completely. Apple’s integrations aren’t the problem. @manton

@manton Yeah, I’m also worried about engine monopoly… I kinda wish the EU did something like «You have to allow support for other engines — with less than 50% market share». ☺️

Also, I think the main issue with browser competition is that only Safari is allowed extensions. Engines are much less of an issue, IMO.

@Havn Yeah, it becomes a problem when a monopolist (or gatekeeper) leverages those kind of integrations to have an unfair advantage. I don't think Apple should be required to open up every little API, but for the big stuff like the App Store, they need to.

@manton Yeah, but I tried to make an important distinction:

I think this is OK from Apple: «You can’t use our nice AirPods integration — go make your own. 😤»

But I don’t think this is OK: «You can’t use our nice AirPods integration— oh, and you’re also not allowed to do the work yourselves. 🙂‍↔️»

@manton I guess that feels like a need-mention to me, but I know I'm out of touch. I know I wish I'd learned that all platform browsers were restricted to WebKit long before I did, though.

@manton Maybe take the opportunity to bring back Safari for Windows? Or make Safari for Android? 😎

@drewmccormack @manton

The difference is that the EU Commissioner does not have a personal vendetta with Microsoft. Instead of creating an environment for fair competition, they nurture corrupt lobbyism.

I’ve been few times in the agro committee and everything there is dictated by Monsanto, BASF, and big agro. No place for healthy organic food. And everything is completely opaque.