So despite the very weak propaganda about the Houthis, it turns out it was all about the Gaza genocide. This could have stopped at any point by the Biden administration, instead it came down to Trump and his real estate guy telling Israel how high to jump (debunking another weak propaganda narrative). All for Zionist donors and votes, and he still lost.
It's fine for App Store developers to complain about their costs of doing business like any other business. I'm not sure what the point of bringing up nonsensical hypotheticals like bank payments is.
Well the they might be just a college student, but they could have a relationship with the actual target in some way. And if it's part of a complex operation they could be trying some indirect approaches.
This will be another issue determined by EU courts, but Apple is not justifying it as a show of force. They're justifying it based on Epic's prior breach of contract and statements they've made. I think based on the record, courts will side with Apple.
Right, the major difference being that Epic is not an employee of Apple and thus cannot benefit from employment law. The terms of their relationship is governed by contract law, and now the DMA.
Epic perhaps thought Apple might show them grace after the lawsuit in the US. A kind of repeat of the Apple-Samsung litigation where everyone has a "it's just business" attitude and keeps doing business together while simultaneously suing each other. Apple on the other hand has decided they will show them no quarter. I don't think they're being emotional about it. I think it's to show every other developer that they will actually enforce the DPLA that everyone signs, and they won't turn the other cheek.
Companies comply with those regulations because, on balance, the incentives still make it logical to. That doesn't mean an unbalanced regulation that misunderstands the target's incentives would result in the outcome the regulator wants.
Malicious compliance and "spirit of the law" aren't real things when it comes to the legal system. You either comply with the law or you don't. And courts will ultimately decide if Apple's interpretation of the DMA complies or not.
They were basically negotiating in public. I think the EC probably realized that the DMA as currently written is flawed and producing outcomes they don't want, and this episode basically highlighted it to them. They probably told Apple there won't be any enforcement against only Safari having it, because the alternative is worse. A basic principle is that you are very unlikely to compel Apple to engineer anything unless they choose to, and you would most likely lose in the EU courts if you tried to. Any regulation that doesn't factor that in is going to be doomed to fail.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/08/sergey-...