- Apple has attacked EU laws in a new press briefing
- AirPods Live Translation is the latest feature not to appear in the EU
- The EU is “damaging privacy and security” Apple says
After years of regulatory scrutiny from the EU – involving big fines, alternative app stores, and much more – Apple executives have spoken out about the pressures of European bureaucracy, claiming users are being denied the “magical, innovative experience” that the Apple ecosystem offers.
“[EU regulators] want to take the magic away – of having a tightly integrated experience that Apple provides – and make us like the other guys,” Apple executive Greg Joswiak said in a press briefing, as per the BBC.
The comments come as Apple launches the Apple AirPods Pro 3 alongside a new Live Translation feature for piping language translations right into your ears. The feature isn’t going to be available in Europe, because Apple would need to put in extra work to get it to work with other devices besides AirPods and iPhones.
That interoperability is key to the EU’s ongoing demands, and an important part of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that came into force in 2022. The EU sees a closed ecosystem as bad for consumers – part of the reason that Apple Intelligence was originally blocked for those in EU countries – whereas Apple promotes it as a benefit.
‘Undermining innovation’
The “bureaucrats in Brussels” are “creating a worse experience for their citizens – our users” Joswiak said. “They’re undermining innovation, they’re infringing our intellectual property and they’re damaging privacy and security.”
By opening up its platforms to third-party hardware and software – through app sideloading, for example – Apple insists it’s having to weaken security and degrade the quality of experience that comes with an Apple-only setup.
“[EU rules] are a good thing for consumers, because that means that you actually have choice over which device you’re going to use, and you can get them to talk to one another, essentially,” Sébastien Pant, from European consumer advocacy group BEUC, told the BBC.
It’s a debate that’s unlikely to end anytime soon, and Apple isn’t the only company affected. The EU is continuing to push for the power to decrypt private messages in apps like WhatsApp and Signal, which it says will benefit law enforcement agencies – though for many tech organizations, secure and private encryption for users is a must.
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