- I'll go a step farther. iOS is the only mobile OS that restricts PWA's and I think they do it on purpose to force you out of PWAs and into native apps. I think Apple should 100% support PWAs with no shenanigans, they should work 100% without Apple needing to approve of anything too.
Steve Jobs pitched PWAs way back when, I don't know why all we've gotten is a half-baked solution from Apple other than they want you in their App Store with a native app.
- Apple told the European Commission it would roll out the new terms in January 2026. This letter is saying that the uncertainty leading up to January 2026 is causing damage and not in concordance with the European Commission finding in August 2025. Do I understand that right?
Did the European Commission agree to the January 2026 deadline or not? Have they been working internally behind the scenes with Apple or are they as in the dark as these developers? What is the legal mechanism to push disclosure a month earlier and why is the letter only being published now?
These are sincere questions of mine, in case it's not clear.
- This is normal Apple behaviour going at least as far back as the noughties, if not the 1980s.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43421180Apple care about the American and Asian markets. They have long treated the EU as a joke whose consumer laws they can ignore. That is why, the past few years, Apple has behaved so petulantly and strangely in reaction to EU stipulations. They feel it's beneath them. - If I had to develop commercial applications expecting interoperability from the 2nd largest mobile operating system I would be very pissed.
As a consumer with the resources to leave, the choice is simple.
- Funny enough because of the judge’s ruling, anyone can link outside of the App Store in the US to accept payments without paying Apple anything.
- All the while Android users - or at least those on the Samsung Galaxy sub-ecosystem - are happily downloading free, as in open source, software from alternative sources like F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/), Obtainium (https://obtainium.imranr.dev/), Accrescent (https://accrescent.app/), and even can access the main app store through a more privacy friendly way using Aurora (https://auroraoss.com/) - although with the latter you will probably break a license agreement you never read anyway, so fuck that.
That, and:
* Customization is better -- Apple has nothing like Good Lock, which is developed AND officially supported by Samsung,
* AI is better -- And Samsung even gives the choice to run AI features completely locally on your phone -or- in the cloud,
* Features for power users are all around better -- As a example did you know Google built a freaking virtualization service which allows you to run a full Linux operating system, with an complete KDE Plasma or GNOME UI on top of Android? Well, now you do. Super fun feature to have on a phone. Even more super fun feature to have on a tablet.
And then there's DeX -- at least on the Galaxies, as long as Google is working on the built in desktop features for the next Android release.
And for those times you quickly want or need a Linux shell you can launch Termux (https://termux.dev/en/).
Most notably and importantly: for all these things you don't have to root or jailbreak ANYTHING... They work completely out of the box -- Although you can get a scary sounding warning when downloading stuff from outside the Play store, but if you really understand and can deal with the consequences this can be easily solved using a toggle button.
How Apple keeps managing to drive themselves and their developer ecosystem completely in the ground still is completely baffling to me. And that comes from someone who really used to love Apple, back in the Jobs era (Got the first iPod, iPhone, iPad, and first Intel MacBook Pro to prove it).
PS: Because lots of people got super pissed about Google abandoning sideloading on Android they walked back on their initial decisions and it will keep working for the foreseeable future
- Well, if Apple were really clever, they'd have introduced an 'EU DMA CAPTCHA' by now, requiring anyone EU-adjacent-resident to mark all the evil EU bureaucrats in a picture of room before allowing them to resume their doomscrolling.
I mean, it absolutely worked for effectively sinking the GDPR, where pretty much everyone now equates that law with obnoxious 'cookie banners', to the point that these regulations are being relaxed, despite never requiring these banners in any way, shape or form in the first place.
But, yeah, despite that, I'd say they'll get away with this as well...
- > Apple has said it will roll out new App Store terms in January 2026, but developers say the company has provided no clarity on what those changes will involve or whether they will actually comply with the DMA.
> "We have seen this playbook before in Europe and beyond," the signatories warn, adding that they suspect any new terms will continue to impose fees that would violate the law.
So the complaint is that they might violate the law next month?
- Give people an inch and they will want a mile. I hope Apple resists these bullies who feel entitled to use all the hardwork Apple put into building their platform.