Third-party app stores arrive on the iPhone… but not in Brexit Britain
Sometimes in life, you have to do something you don’t want to do. And this is true especially if the person telling you what to do is the all-powerful EU tech regulators – even if you’re as omnipotent as Apple.
Last year, a major new law came into force across the EU that was designed to rein in the power of the tech titans by designating companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Meta as “core platform services”, conferring on them a new set of obligations.
Now we’re starting to see what that looks like in practice, as Apple has grudgingly announced a raft of changes to the way that iOS works, in response to the EU’s desire for more competition on our phones.
For example, web browsers on iPhone will no longer be limited to Apple’s own WebKit rendering engine, which means that third-party browsers – and not only third-party wrappers for WebKit – could soon come to iOS for the first time.
Perhaps more significant for most iPhone owners are the changes to payments and the App Store. Apple will soon be allowing third-party payment apps to take advantage of the iPhone’s NFC chip, meaning that European users could be making payments in shops without having to go through Apple Pay, denying Apple a cut of the revenue.
And as for the App Store, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) essentially means that Apple’s monopoly over how apps can be installed on iPhones is over, as third-party app stores will be permitted. (You can read Jon Honeyball’s take on this from p110 – Ed.) Such a thing has been available on Android for many years, where users have long been able to download apps from stores provided by companies such as Amazon and Epic Games instead of Google.
“Malicious compliance”
Unsurprisingly, Apple isn’t happy. In announcing the changes, a press release on Apple’s website warned that “the new options for processing payments and downloading apps on iOS open new avenues for malware, fraud and scams, illicit and harmful content, and other privacy and security threats”.
And in executing the changes, Apple is essentially trying to give as little ground as possible, to the point where Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney, a well-known Apple detractor, characterises Apple’s response to the changes as form of “malicious compliance”.
This is because even though it will soon be possible for Europeans t
